The spark for this blog was from the 16 March Newsweek column “The Technologist,” by Steven Levy. The piece is about an upcoming book written by Andrew Keen called “The Cult of the Amateur.”
This link connects to the book's publisher Random House. It's about the central theme of the book and creates an interesting argument.
The marketing tagline is “How today’s Internet killing our culture,” but is that statement true? The author believes that when everyone has a voice the best voices are drowned in a sea of mediocrity and slang.
I take the position of Devil’s Advocate and disagree. As much as I respect grammatical structure in our language and opine for romantic and traditional literary staples, I can’t concede that the Internet’s one person=one voice and everyone-gets-a-chance-philosophy is life-threatening for all other forms of culture. Nor do I agree that all younger generations are blindly promoting this evil conquest of our civilization by creating a new stage on which to express their beliefs. It smacks of elitism to cry fowl in the face of such healthy competition. I believe the cream rises to the top even in the blogging arena.
The only concession I will give to the writer is in the credibility department. The line between truth and entertainment in our media needs to be reinforced. There are far too many holes in that wall but there is a difference between authentic news and creative fiction.
What do you think? Is the lowest common denominator ruining our culture?
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1 comment:
I don't think that today's internet is killing our culture. If anything it is helping our culture because we are learning to be more dependent and we are able to find almost anything online these days. I also don't think that younger generations are trying to promote being bad by creating a new way to express their beliefs. I couldn't agree more about the whole truth in the media thing. They need to tell the truth in a lot of instances, and you are right there is a difference in between actual new or new that is fake or not real.
People who think that the internet is killing our culture are the people who do not know anything about the internet. I am not trying to be stereotypical, but it is the truth.
Like I said once before the internet is only here to help out our society and to make things easier on everyone.
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