[New-Poetry] Poetry and Art The Cult of the Amateur

[jforjames at aol.com]

He writes: “Millions and millions of exuberant [Internet user] monkeys – many with no more talent in the creative arts than our primate cousins – are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity. For today’s cult of amateur monkeys can use their networked computers to publish everything from uninformed political commentary to unseemly home videos, to embarrassingly amateurish music, to unreadable poems, reviews, essays and novels.”
--

I don't see the great net threat. (His use of the word monkey reminds me of the old concept that if you had an infinite number of monkeys typing away, then one of them would randomly type Shakespeare's King Lear. Wouldn't we like to find the equilavent monkey among the blather and din?) 

No doubt there is a glut of poor material going up all over the web, but who is really being attracted to it? Are the smart folk somehow bogged down reviewing or wading through thousand of hours of insipid video, crank blogs, pathetic poetry, etc? I somehow don't think so. What gets attention deserves attention. 

This poor Andrew Keen fellow must methodically read every email (spam included) in his inbox. He's probably not doing too well with his TV remote control either, painstakingly going one by one through all those channels to find something worthy to watch.
Finnegan



-----Original Message-----
From: Jorgensen, Alexander <jorgensen_a at yahoo.com>
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Sent: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 11:39 pm
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry and Art The Cult of the Amateur



http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9cbeed14-fee9-11db-aff2-000b5df10621.html
 
 Andrew Keen, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has set the 
blogosphere alight with his new book, a scathing attack on user-generated 
content. Sub-titled “How the Internet is killing our culture”, Keen’s 
book is a polemic against the “anything goes” standards of much of online 
publishing.
    Keen does not believe in “the wisdom of the crowd”. Much of the 
content filling up YouTube, MySpace, and blogs is just an “an endless 
digital forest of mediocrity” which, unconstrained by professional 
standards or editorial filters,  can alter public debate and manipulate public 
opinion
    He also fears that the free swapping, downloading, mashing-up and 
aggregating of intellectual property threaten the ability of artists and 
thinkers with contributions of real value to earn a livelihood from 
their talents.
    ‘The Cult of the Amateur’
is published by Random House on June 5. 
Andrew Keen will be online to answer questions about his book on 
Thursday June 7 at 2pm BST (9am EDT).


--
"[H]e who leaps into the void owes no explanation
to those who watch.” (Jean-Luc Godard)

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