And when I say ‘we’, I mean all of us who recognise the value and significance of the epistemological shift that is loosely know as ‘Web 2.0′. Know who else agrees with me? Mark Federman, of the fantastic blog What is the (Next) Message?. In this post, Mark (another blogger who’s a PhD candidate!) links to his appearance on TVO’s The Agenda and performs a thorough critique of Keen’s ‘Cult of the Amateur’ argument. Among the choice bits in his breakdown of Keen’s approach is this:
“Second, his argument supposes that modernity (i.e., late 19th and 20th century) got this whole business of creating culture and knowledge right, and that we are at the pinnacle of our ability to produce cultural and knowledge artefacts. That is a type of arrogance that we have also seen over the past 3000 years – at every age, the privileged have assumed that they are at the zenith of advancement and enlightenment. And every time, they are wrong (and if you watch the Keen interview, you’ll see precisely what I mean about privilege and arrogance).”
Like all of Mark’s posts, it’s a solid read, particularly because he’s hyper-aware of the relationship between mass culture and structures of power. If this is the sort of thing that interests you, it’s definitely one of those blogs that you should add to your reader.
[Image from geektronica.com]
