AMATEURISM GOES BIG

Some leaders of the digital age are hailing the birth of a revolutionary new era of cultural democracy. They cite YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, music file sharing and blogs as marking an end to elitism and gatekeeping and reliance on the “wisdom of the masses.”

Why not have ordinary citizens conduct their own interviews with candidates, make their own movies, pick their own music, produce their own literature, gather their own facts and report their own news? People have been doing all of these for years, of course; the change is the reach of their questions or the number of strangers who can view their short movies.

Andrew Keen, a Silicon Valley technocrat, sees the dark side of what he calls Web 2.0. He has written an important new book: “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture.”

He writes: “I fear that we will live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising.”

The consumer-created online encyclopedia called Wikipedia draws his special scorn. Its management is so democratic (and loose) that contributors can delete material they don’t like and insert blatant falsehoods such as a recent entry that the author Tom Wolfe had been reported dead.

Google, by far the most popular search engine and worth $150 billion at last count, also takes a hit. You just type in a few key words and you get thousands or millions of pertinent links and can take your pick. Sounds great, but Mr. Keen’s point is that it is a parasite that creates no content of its own but links preexisting content to other preexisting content on the Internet and charges advertisers every time one of those links is clicked. What’s more, the priority of the listings depends on the number of consumer hits. In other words, Google tells us just what other people think is interesting or important – thus reflecting the “wisdom of the masses.”

But this doesn’t fully explain the change in media. Some of YouTube’s most popular clips are made by professionals; Google’s delivery service, even if it is not creating content, is extraordinarily valuable; and as for Wikipedia – its democratic nature that may preclude it as a school-paper source also keeps it well-monitored.

Mr. Keen sees some hope in constructive, well-edited sites by the British newspaper the Guardian, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and an alternative to the Wikipedia called Citizendium, described as an experimental new project that “combines public participation with expert guidance.”

As Mr. Keen advises, parents and teachers and individual users of the Internet must seek out trustworthy sources and beware of hidden propaganda and deception. The Internet is here to stay, but it must be approached with skepticism and watchfulness. Just as the experts and the gatekeepers have their faults, so does the wisdom of the masses.