Is the Web 2.0 Killing Culture?

There is a thought provoking article in the Sunday Times (London) about an upcoming new book by Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur.

Keen "argues that many of the ideas promoted by champions of web 2.0 are gravely flawed. Instead of creating masterpieces, the millions of exuberant monkeys are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity: uninformed political commentary, unseemly home videos, embarrassingly amateurish music, unreadable poems, essays and novels."

As a case in point, Keen points out that, "Wikipedia, with its millions of amateur editors and unreliable content, is the 17th most trafficked site on the net. Britannica.com, a subscription-based service with 100 Nobel prize-winning contributors and more than 4,000 other experts is ranked 5,128. As a result, Britannica has had to make painful cuts in staffing and editorial."

“Once dismantled, I fear that this professional media – with its rich ecosystem of writers, editors, agents, talent scouts, journalists, publishers, musicians, reporters and actors – can never again be put back together. We destroy it at our peril,” says Keen.

The problem is, supposedly, that people, given a choice between "amateur" content at ad-supported free sites and "expert" content pay-for-use sites, will always choose the former.

Keen makes some valid points, however, I think his concerns are overwrought and anecdotal. Talent isn't going to disappear just because TV stations, record companies and publishing houses aren't there to guide it through the creative process. On the contrary, in direct contradiction of Keen's use of the "dictator image" of the democratization of the web (i.e. "dictatorship of idiots", "if the crowd says that two plus two equals five, then two plus two really does equal five.") , the new media abolishes the dictatorship of the few. We are now able to make our own choices regarding talent and value.

Much issue has been made about the unreliability of Wikipedia. However Nature showed that Wikipedia and Britannica were roughly equal in accuracy of scientific content. This is not to say that Wikipedia does not have its issues, but these (i.e. vandalism, differences in opinion) can be resolved through newer alternatives, such as Citizendium, which aims to improve on Wikipedia’s model by adding “gentle expert oversight” and requiring contributors to use their real names.

Image by Ross Mayfield.