THE RISE OF THE AMATEUR CULTURE

MyTwittFace Culture has come about as Web 2.0 has made these platforms available to everybody. Social networking sites are popping up everywhere as also Blogs are.

Several experts within various areas have become skeptical to the rise of this new culture blossoming up.

Is there such a thing as unbiased – objective information and has it ever occurred? Will Web 2.0 introduce more uncertainty to the facts presented as it makes way for anonymous information providers to present their “facts” to everyone – for free.

Examples that the Web 2.0 sphere has created some unwanted effects in the news rooms – web 2.0 sites around the world is evident and scary.

There is a time where we need to take a stand on how democratic the Web 2.0 really is, and how we can trust the facts presented in this new culture presented to us.

Someone will argue that the database will be the downfall of our culture(s) and will promote actions that will be totalitarian in the end.

Web 2.0 and its culture of Social Networking may not be responsible alone for the total downfall of cultures around the world, but there is reason to raise some warnings.

Special interest groups, whether its hate groups, political action committees, or corporations with a product to sell, can convey their message without revealing their true identity.

News can be disguised and actually be advertising and public relations so the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred. Instead of more community, knowledge, or culture, all that Web 2.0 really delivers is more dubious content from anonymous sources.

There are many examples to support this type of “news” or “information” like the seemingly amateur-made YouTube satire of Al Gore's environmental message that was actually created by a conservative lobbying firm with big oil clients. Another example is unattributed blogs praising companies that really originate from the PR departments of those companies and as well as the fake personal ad on Craigslist.

The underlying message is that you as a buyer or reader should be beware. We are at a stage when anyone can add unfiltered, non-verified, and unattributed information to a growing array of social networking sites which some people rely on for their news or research. We have created a dangerous confusion and falsification of the matter of knowledge to a culture and a world where truth is hard to differentiate from false.

Lots of experts and users praise the democratizing effect of Web 2.0. However it is timely toKeen warn, however, that when users and participants buy into the ideal that anyone can contribute information, we lose the accuracy that comes from reliance on experts. Indeed, expert authors and creators (and librarians) have valuable training, knowledge, and experience.

Web 2.0 can seriously undermine the industries that create high-quality content—our news, our music, our literature, our TV shows, and our movies. This must be paid information to fuel the information economy. There is a fear that this development could extend to undermining the foundations of sound collection development policies that rely on authority of information creators as a measure of quality.

 “Old media” are in danger of being replaced by widespread social networking sites where “ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.” We may replace trustworthy old media products with the “digital narcissism” of blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, or short called as “MyTwittFace” Culture.

This might seem as a  fair amount of doom and gloom but there are solutions to channeling the power of the Web 2.0 “revolution” in constructive ways. As an answer to the amateur content of Wikipedia, we can highlight the phenomenon called Citizendium, the wiki encyclopedia that combines public participation with the guidance of experts. As an answer to unattributed news sites, there are success stories of some veteran newspapers (such as the Guardian and Wall Street Journal) and some more recent news sources (such as Politico) in transitioning to the web, with vetted content and amateur comments clearly differentiated and income generated in new ways.

There are arguments that some legislative initiatives have to be made in order to catch and punish perpetrators which can be a solution to illegal file sharing or intellectual property theft.

Several have challenged the idea that a culture of sharing information is dangerous. Science has always been about sharing and the response to this is that editors and peer reviews make sure that only the most reliable and highest-quality science is published under a journal's good name.

This could be one of the most pervasive dangers of social networking—the seductive power that leads even those professionals tasked with creating, collecting, and distributing high-quality information to become early adopters and firm supporters of “the cult of the amateur.”

About the Author:

Stig-Arne Kristoffersen has a background as civil engineer and geoscientist. He has worked mainly within the oil and gas industry from the mid 1980s. He has written a few fictional novels as well as being the author of some professional litterature within oil and gas sector, he act as a writer to various web sites.

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