Keen's Noble Amateur

In the "Noble Amateur" Keen argues that Web 2.0 is changing cultural landscape but not for the better. Web 2.0 such as Youtube, facebook, and myspace is taking over our culture. Keen states, "This is what happens when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meet mob rule." Keen is implying that our generation is filled with tastless, useless information that is only means for entertainment. I agree with Keen, but is it not what our society wants and craves? We are a world of expression now and free-will; we thrive on thrills and celebrity gossip. Keen also writes of fact and one's opinion tied in with expertise and amateurism. This is very true, and our class on Colbert and Wikipedia proves that. I had no clue people could type or change the definition of a term. To me that sounds unreal and maybe our society is becoming too expressive. Where Keen was coming from when he talked of Web 2.0 changing cultural lansdscape for not the better, was that people anymore go for sites that our most popular, but not necessarily relevant. It is a vicious cycle and it is so easy to get things turned around on cyberspace, but people just need to be smart about these things and trust their judgements and instincts. An example I found of this is from Youtube. This video talks of the internet spreading lies. It talks of Wikipedia again being a place for possible irrelevance. The pictures displayed on the video were pictures that were photoshopped to preceive a particular person or object falsly. Keen also argues that these so called free websites are not really so free after all. So many people are putting out in cyberspace their information. Privacy seems to be no longer such a thing. These website producers are giving us a share of their creation and with that in return we are giving them some of our information as sourses of entertainment! I agree with Keen in his article about our culture and Web 2.0 being a harm to our society. With the good always comes the bad. In conclusion it is life, so we have to be careful and take information posted online like a grain of salt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnWI2oStmdw