I have spent more time today than I should have reading some of the more recent toings-and-froings of Andrew Keen, celebrated author of The Cult of the Amateur.  Here, for example, is the full transcript of a debate between Keen and Emily Bell of The Guardian.  I took the time to read it carefully.

Keen keeps focusing on the roles of gatekeepers and experts, and returns time and again to the screening for quality, with results in the commercialization of approved cultural content.

I found this brief blog post tonight, which while not focused on cultural content, gives a vivid example of how blogs, links and the infrastructure that supports them offer useful expertise that the blogger discovered and decided to use in addressing her thorny problem.  According to Keen, this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen online, or if it does, infrequently at best.  I suspect that it happens very regularly.

.

John J. Renton — The Nature of Earth

I have been developing a methodology for Solari to determine the total economic return (impact on both investor and living ecosystem) of a mining operation. I have been inching along as my understanding of geology is limited to dim recollections of high school science.

I just decided to put the effort on hold and watch The Teaching Company’s course in Geology: The Nature of Earth: An Introduction to Geology taught by John J. Renton of West Virginia University. It is unbelievably helpful. These things are the opposite of Hollywood - a professor who is authentic and grounded, loves to learn and teach and really cares.

When I was in college or business school, you were lucky to have 1 or 2 of such teachers a year. Now it appears you can have them every time for whatever topic you want to learn about. This may be better than Netflix documentaries.

.

My point is that amongst the hundreds of millions of people using the Web, there will be many examples, daily, of people offering or sharing information, knowledge and expertise ... person-to-person, link by link, when needed or discovered (please take note of the layered filtering described below by Chris Anderson.  I suspect many of us have experienced it.).  No official gatekeepers needed.

.

Bonus:  Concluding comments from a debate between Chris Anderson (Wired, The Long Tail) and Keen

Anderson: Fantastic. When you say I can filter a million voices myself, I am filtering a million voices, but not doing it myself. What I have is layers of filters.

There are people out there who have more time than me, have more expertise than me or just find things that I haven't found. I have maybe 200 voices out there that I listen to, but collectively I'm filtering a million voices through all those layers.

As a result, I get a richer, higher-quality diet of information better suited to me to pull from a wider pool and wider variety of sources. It's not that much trouble. It's much easier than it's ever been before.

[ Snip ... ]

Keen: I think we are seeing more fragmentation. I think we are seeing more anger. I think we are seeing this radicalization of culture and life. I think that technology seems to be almost coincidental and has exploded around this at the same time that Americans are very angry about many different things.
It has nothing to do with blogs or technology, but all these things are coming together in a way that concerns me and I think that if our traditional institutions of politics or culture or economics continue to be undermined by this personalization and radical individualization of things, then I think we will be in trouble.

I think that if the Internet becomes more and more of a soapbox to trash elected politicians and mainstream media figures and to conduct these witch hunts on anyone who ever makes a mistake, then I think that eventually we are going to find ourselves in a world where we're just going to be staring at a mirror.

It's going to result in what I call cultural and economic anarchy, and I don't think that is a good thing. I think it will result in less community, which is ironic given the fact that this thing is supposed to be about community.

.

As always, I am reminded of the plot and dynamics of the film Pleasantville.

.

Tags: Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur, Solari, Catherine Austin Fitts, Chris Anderson, Long Tail

Powered by Qumana