It’s quite ironic. I was told to read Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur yesterday for work. My last big story series before starting AA2.0 is on citizen journalism and emerging technologies surrounding the industry.
Well, I feel that Keen may have some interesting points. He is skeptical of web 2.0 because he feels that only through the sheer volume of one’s voice can one break through the rest of the crowd. Meaning, if you have 34 million bloggers out there that consider themselves reporters, it’s practically immpossible to break through the static. Not too mention, a great deal of these citizen journalists have no formal training in reporting or fact checking, therefore, making their rants baseless and sloppy. He seems to be turned off by the unformal nature of it all. Understandable.
I get it. Right or wrong, he has a point. It reminds me of a metaphor I heard recently. My boss referred to the communal culture of the web 2.0 industry as an overloaded stage full of actors. All these actors are waving their arms and jumping left and right, doing anything to entertain the audience. However, the problem is that the chairs in the theater are all empty. The audience has vanished.
The individuals that used to fill these seats have since become entertainers themselves and are now on stage waving their arms and jumping left and right along side everyone else.
