Are all these blogs a good thing?
Over at ZDNet, Dan Farber has a short retrospective marking the first ten years since blogging was born. One interesting part of his article deals with the question of whether all the millions of blogs that have sprung up are a worthy democratizing force or mostly a lot of ill-informed, repetitive blather. In particular he mentions a book that is sure to raise a few hackles. Farber says:
Andrew Keen, who will soon be blogging for ZDNet, has a written a book, The Cult of the Amateur: how the democratization of the digital world is assaulting our economy, our culture, and our values (due out June 5). I read a galley proof of Andrew’s book this weekend. It is very engaging, and quite controversial and provocative. He doesn’t hold back any punches, arguing that unfettered blogging and social media is a kind of curse on culture, threatening the quality of public discourse, stifling creativity and encouraging plagiarism and intellectual property theft.
He posits that citizen journalists don’t have the resources to provide reliable news, lacking the filters of traditional media, and that the hordes of amateur journalists often distort the news.
I have to say that a discouraging proportion of what I see on the Web is infantile and in many cases simply wrong. The question is: can the average reader discriminate and winnow the grain from the chaff? What’s your opinion?
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