I've been reading through a galley copy of Keen's book and I've been struck by its similarity to Nicholas Lemann's piece in the New Yorker last summer, in which Lemann worried about the effect of citizen journalism on professional journalism. Sure, citizen journalism might provide hyper-local commentary and help round out coverage, he wrote, but it can never replace the kind of well-funded investigative journalism that sustains our democracy, etc.
<br><br>The problem is, I've never heard any citizen journalist or advocate for citizen journalism suggest that traditional media should be replaced; Lemann set up a straw man that he could conveniently use to scare the pros out there about the blog menace that, with their amateur-hour ramblings and content-aggregating CMSs, were going to destroy traditional media and therefore the very foundations of our democracy... it all sounded like the protestations of someone nervous that his grip on the status quo was loosening, and he was feeling defensive. What he failed to mention was that big media companies were too arrogant to notice that the public was coming to expect a more transparent approach to reporting, and was coming to think of itself as a producer rather than a receiver of content, and now that it was almost too late they were blaming it all on those damn amateurs.
<br><br>While I do think that the "web 2.0" is about opening up the process of making, receiving, sending, remixing, gatekeeping, mashing, etc. to more people (democratizing the process), like citizen journalism, this isn't about replacing an old
paradigm of trusted sources with a new one of amateur relativity, it's about (hopefully) correcting a model that represents the interests of a very elite, wealthy few -- though those elite tend to own the most popular participatory sites, as Trebor has pointed out, which certainly complicates things.
<br><br>In any case, the big media companies won't become extinct because of this; instead they will have to learn how to coexist in a new environment that invites a broader conception of culture and art than their market-tested approach allows.
<br><br>And while this means that alongside some culturally important stuff we see a lot of inanity on YouTube, or narcissistic chatter on MySpace, it's not like inanity and narcissism are hard to find on any television channel...
<br><br>-Josh <br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/26/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">sergio basbaum</b> <<a href="mailto:sbasbaum@gmail.com">sbasbaum@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Thanks for this Craig. I absolutely agree. All that maniphesto is so<br>presumtuous and thinks itself as too important, but is truly naive.<br><br>This idea of the web "killing" culture makes no sense. The web is not
<br>killing culture: it is culture. Contemporary culture, indeed, in which<br>new cultural forms are emerging. All this Adorno thing makes no sense<br>since a long time ago... If it was for us to take Adorno that far,<br>
what would we make with all non-European cultural forms like Brazilian<br>popular music -- to say the least? Is it a decadence of true high -art<br>cultural expressions? It cannot be tought this way.<br><br>I`m myself taken for some as a technophobic -- which of course I'm not
<br>--, and I've been working on a lot of critical insights concerning<br>technological culture. But someone who cannot understand that<br>technological culture is contemporary culture has a very narrow vision<br>of what the word "culture" means...
<br><br>best for all<br><br>S.<br><br>On 4/25/07, Craig Bellamy <<a href="mailto:txt@craigbellamy.net">txt@craigbellamy.net</a>> wrote:<br>> Some of these ideas are silly. What about the telephone; a lot of people
<br>> talk about insignificant things on the telephone?<br>><br>> What is a 'professional' phone conversation and what is a 'amatuer'<br>> conversation? If a European intellactual talks to another person on the
<br>> telephone is this better that my mother talking to her best friend Beth<br>> about startegies for growing Tomatoes?<br>><br>> An anti Web 2.0 manifesto is intellectually narrow. People will talk to<br>> other people about what ever they want to using what ever tools that
<br>> they have at their disposal. There is nothing new about that.<br>><br>> best,<br>><br>> Craig<br>><br>><br>><br>> ______________________________________________________________________<br>
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