Blog This

Andrew Keen portrays the Internet as a sort of congested hodgepodge of information in his new book The Cult of the Amateur. It is “the disappearance of truth” he claims and “the web 2.0 revolution is really delivering superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment. The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of a hundred million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves”.
Well maybe they are and what’s so wrong with that. There are also as many bloggers and Internet users who are speaking truth and blogging truth and art and poetry and music and intelligent banter. And guess what, it’s not that hard to separate one from the other. I have no problem using the Internet to find “reliable” news, editorials, blogs, wikis, encyclopedias, dictionaries, humor; communication in its various forms. Why is it that only those people, organizations, schools, professionals, academia, etc who have established reputations are worthy to speak their mind or report on current events or write a report. I agree that some of the lines are blurred and this is unfortunate, some will seek to manipulate public opinions and some will seek to bring the truth to light, how can we not have both? Unfortunately, as with most things in life, there is usually a down side accompanying the up side; deal with it.
And from a practical and professional angle, these are the mediums our patrons are choosing to use and they want our help to do it. They need help navigating, blogging, working myspace, setting up email and understanding some of the deliberate fuzzy lines used on the Internet. This is our job and the more we know the more we can help.
Mr. Keens statement that “the words of the wise man count for no more than the mutterings of a fool”, are a gross exaggeration and do not translate into the 2.0 world I see everyday. That would be the world of intelligent and thoughtful blogs (I mean really there are so many), websites with fulfilled democracy such as wikipedia and must I name the countless excellent information pages one can find on the web? Not to mention its function as a communication tool, an educational tool…………………………………..