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E-books, Wikipedia and The Cult of the Amateur
June 29, 2007 | 9:51 am
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By David Rothman
Web 2.0 is the target of Andrew Keen, a Silicon Valley business man, who, in the tradition of Michael Gorman, argues that the many-to-many interactive approach is undermining venerable institutions like the Encyclopedia Britannica.
So, gang, what do you think? Keen (inevitable book here, inevitable blog here, inevitable blogospheric outcry written up here) isn’t entirely wrong, as I see it—given the amount of dreck online. A TeleRead-style approach, a well-stocked national digital library system, could greatly expand the supply of vetted books and other material while allowing for fair compensation for writers and others. Yes, the amateur alternative has its flaws at times. Wikipedia has suffered QC problems on occasion, and the masses have been known to overwrite sagacious entries from experts.
The promise of 2.0
Unlike Keen, however, I have high hopes for 2.0. Wikipedia is a wonderful starting point for research elsewhere, for example—just like a conventional encyclopedia. Besides, librarians and others could work with Wikipedia to address deficiencies. Furthermore, one wonders how useful the so-called professional information can be at times. With more frequent updating and a greater variety of topics covered, Wikipedia is far more helpful to me than Britannica, which isn’t Web 2-ish enough—lacking sufficient interactivity even among experts.
Having perped six nonfiction books for Ballantine, St. Martin’s Press and other publishers, I myself can’t wait for the popularization of interactive books, allowing for shared comments and other annotations. How much better my work would have been with more updating and with insights (including some at my expense) from knowledgeable readers!
Authority on the obsolete
If institutions like Britannica can’t adapt to the new technology, then they deserve to fail. Such are the ways of marketplaces—both economic and intellectual varieties. I’d much prefer that Britannica thrive. But, except as an artifact for historians and other researchers, what’s the point if its information isn’t fresh? All the “authority” in the world can’t make up for out-of-date information or omissions, and like it or not, the Net has accelerated the pace of innovation, not just in science and technology but also in the humanities.
Caveat: I don’t want everything to be forced to be Web 2.0-ish, and a good example is fiction. Let John Updike be free to be John Updike. Although he’s not one of my favorite writers, I’d hate to see him pushed aside for want of interaction with the masses. Must every artist’s inner life, as expressed through fiction, be instantly crowd-sourced? And should we really think that writers and others can simply live on fees from lecturing or donations? Or that online rankings and forums can replace editors and publishers? We need balance—in copyright, in business models, and in the issue of amateurs vs. pros.
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Comments:
I prefer to leave it to Lawrence Lessig to offer the best examination yet of Mr. Keen’s prattling rant. Mr. Lessig’s critique can be found on his weblog:
http://lessig.org/blog/2007/05/keens_the_cult_of_the_amateur.html
The Lessig link claims that Keen argues that the problem with something like Wikipedia is not vetted for accuracy, but of course neither are books from most non-academic publishers (and what I mean there is they are not given thorough fact checking).
When you do a thorough look at both amateurs and professionals, what you typically find is that quality is all over the place. I’ve seen bloggers who do better jobs covering complex issues than major newspapers. On the other hand, you only have to spend a few hours reading through the comments at Digg on any topic to realize there are plenty of people who feel no qualms asserting their opinions on topics of which they have, at best, only rudimentary knowledge.
I think the more interesting thing is not quality but how markets for cultural products are going to become more and more niche-based.
One of the things about the pre-Internet world is that it wasn’t enough that I have a high-quality product — I also had to have a product that appealed to enough people to justify the effort of publishing, etc. That’s no longer true. I pay for things online all the time, including books, that would simply not exist without the Internet because the market is so small that marketing costs alone would never justify going forward. But today, there are people making nice incomes filling these niches.
Multi-prize-winning science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer gives Keen’s polemic five stars (out of five) on Amazon and says:
Of course Sawyer might be viewed as just another amateur book critic of questionable competence. Hence, readers may wish to seek out the opinions of professionally credentialed book critics also.
Bleah.
I saw Keen interviewed on PBS newshour, and he gave stock, shallow & dismissive answers. Two counterexamples. First, (cited by Eric Raymond) open source software like Firefox tends to be higher quality precisely because it is noncommercial and not dependent on strict deadlines and time-to-market pressures. Second, his criticism might stick a bit with blogging, but with writing/publishing, the vast majority of high quality prose and poetry go unnoticed. Nowadays though, at least if Emily Dickinson is publishing poetry on her blog, there’s an outside chance someone might stumble upon it. Under Keen’s scenario, apparently writing gains validity only by being submitted to & accepted by the “culture industries.” the implication of his argument (at least as presented to me) is that it’s not worth people’s time to hunt down & discover the hidden gems of the Internet. to the extent that it wastes people’s time, I guess he has a point. But oddly, as I grow older, I am more inclined to read a random novel or webpage than to trust what the experts and mainstream critics have told me I’m supposed to like.
When you condemn the Net populism that brings our attention to videos of cats jumping on trampolines, you also give people an excuse to dismiss underground and avante-garde art.
Frankly, I’m growing sick of critics at mainstream media outlets who use their megaphone to warn us of the dangers of amateurism. The implication seems to be that commercial TV and Time-Warner journalism can be trusted not to promote itself.