The Cult of the Amateur… I always have thought that Huxley’s theorem of the monkeys-typing-could-produce-Hamlet was a great insult to Shakespeare, not to mention the rest of us who produce journals, letters, blogs, emails and bad poetry. If Mr. Keen thinks the birth of cultural mediocrity only recently occurred with Web 2.0, then he hasn’t left his tower long enough to read, watch, or listen to the same books, newspapers, movies, TV shows or music that is widely consumed by the rest of us less discriminating beings. It has always been the onus of the consumer to judge the value of the goods available, and to differentiate material worth its price, be that a cost of time or money.

Each technological advance in our culture that facilitates communication seems to alarm those like Mr. Keen who feel there is a certain quality of life that will be destroyed by a loss of control over the editorializing and distribution of uncensored information. But what Web 2.0 has delivered is not a world of chaos, but a venue of creativity; literally at our fingertips. We can express ourselves with a spectrum of tools not even imaginable in the past. Our audience is the world. It seems reasonable to say that in the wide open cyberspace of the Web, there is enough room for the material of the educated and duly qualified experts, as well as the unrestrained entertainment of many proliferate amateurs.

One last thought. When I open my laptop and sign on, I don’t think of it as Pandora’s Box. It’s more like a box of magic tricks … and anything might happen.