Andrew Keen’s - The Cult of the Amateur

This is a great diatribe to read. Although it’s about as subtle as a film directed by Michael Moore on crack making a lot of points null and void, the key debates are debates which the cultural and technology community need to be having…just perhaps not led by Andrew Keen.  

Democratisation of the internet is a major issue. It allows for greater creativity and dissemination by the wider public but it completely distorts Matthew Arnold’s concepts of High and Low culture. The fact is that no longer is information in the hands of experts and because of that, the Internet has to establish itself as a place where valid information can be found. 

Lawrence Lessig dismantles many of Andrew Keen’s arguments here, which is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel but it’s understandable as Lessig himself is targeted (wrongly) in the book.

As I see it, Lessig makes strong arguments for the amateur in society and indeed it’s a position I support. I just don’t think that this position should be seen as default. It was helpful to read Andrew Keen to bounce arguments off his ranting but it would have been even better to read a well researched, even-tempered argument for the expert in society, simply to challenge and maybe even develop how we establish notions of democracy and expertise on the internet.  

IMHO though if you want further evidence of the benefits of the amateur, look no further. 

(Thx to The Age spy for this. Props to old media.)

Professional

Amateur

The Copy Fetish

This is more of a cultural argument and only marginally has something to do with copyright but I found it interesting.

I ran across this concept in an article I was reading on the cultural transformation of Mp3s.

Walter Benjamin argues that mechanically reproduced art destroys the sense of authenticity, and dissolves the rituality historically attached to traditional arts…

Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual - first the magical, than the religious kind…but the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic reproduction, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics.

This concept of original art being subservient to the copy is a great analysis of the digital age. Both the music industry and the public originally craved the production and consumption of ‘the copy’. Indeed these arguably false realities - etching in time forever what was either a once off recording or a meticulously crafted and distant layered piece of musical art- can be seen to be deified in the acts of vinyl collecting where the mere physical presence of copies lends a certain aura and prestige to the music listener. But this is merely a certain cultural point in time as Kasaras argues.

Perhaps now MP3s are merely the ‘ultimate copy’. Something which can be stored, replenished and copied at will - the ultimate warholian one upmanship of an industry which thrives on selling copies of things. Therefore following Benjamin’s argument one would have to argue that using mp3s is the ultimate political act.

Once again the notion of ‘the spectacle’ rears its head. The ritual is played out in concerts, movie theatres and festivals. Although I remember rituals involving buying albums, flicking through covers and listening to it in one hit, that ritual (for me anyway) has gone. So I guess that proves that rituals aren’t absent from consumption of the copy (see movie theatres and listening to albums) but are perhaps more susceptible to change than consumption of original works like visiting galleries and seeing concerts.