CollaborativEye

There is so much hype about Web 2.0, social media, and collective intelligence that it is really refreshing to read a critical, contrarian perspective, even if you don't happen to agree with it.  Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur is one such perspective.  Keen doesn't pull any punches:

"How today's Internet is killing our culture" (the book's sub-title)

"...the blind leading the blind" (describing Wikipedia)

"...creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity" (output of Web 2.0)

"One chilling reality in this brave new digital epoch is the blurring, obfuscation, and even disappearance of truth."

"Ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule" (definition of Web 2.0) 

Keen makes a couple of good points, but in the end goes astray badly. He raises the issue of expertise and experience being overwhelmed by "amateurs". He cites the case of Wikipedia, for example, where a PhD in astronomy can get edited out by a backyard stargazer.  What do you base your trust of information on? On credentials or authority? On majority vote? On popularity of an opinion? On how many clicks somebody gets? This actually touches on philosophical issues, as witnessed by Keen's fear about the "disappearance of truth". Keen is admittedly a modernist as opposed to a post-modernist. Therefore, he places a lot of trust in authority, and "objective truth". He feels that the Web 2.0 culture is creating nothing but a post-modern collection of opinions instead of truth.  Without going into a full discourse on modernism versus postmodermism (and how to avoid the excesses of both viewpoints), let me instead point out Keen's glaring, and deadly mistake: He makes much of experts such as journalists who in his opinion provide objective, truthful reporting. Come on!!!  An article written in the New York Times is just as biased as a blog entry -- what is important is to have discipline to discern these biases (of course recognizing that we have our own biases affecting our ability to identify biases :-) , and transparency on the part of the source to  "bare their biases".  Holding on to a delusion that experts are unbiased and therefore the only ones capable of discovering or expounding on truth, is simply inexcusable.

This does raise the issue of transparency in the Web 2.0 world, however. Keen gives examples of disingenuous blogging and advertising masquerading as "content." This is a very real issue that must be addressed. Of course Keen isn't alone in his views. Jaron Lanier has written a very interesting essay called Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism. I think Lanier has a much more balanced perspective than Keen. Here is a stellar quote from Lanier's essay:

"In the last year or two the trend has been to remove the scent of people, so as to come as close as possible to simulating the appearance of content emerging out of the Web as if it were speaking to us as a supernatural oracle. This is where the use of the Internet crosses the line into delusion."

What is needed in the Web 2.0 world are trusted mechanisms to connect content to sources (persons) and their "credentials", giving content consumers the information they need to determine how much credibility to give the source and the content. EBAY is attempting this in a restricted sense with the tracking of reputation of buyers and sellers; Technorati with their concept of "Authority" for blogs.  Fortunately, transparency is not typically an issue for Web 2.0 within the enterprise because content contributors are known, along with their credentials, achievements, and organizational authority. Imagine this extended to all content on the web! Keen points to Citizendium as an example of a hybrid Web 2.0 project that attempts to combine the best of Wikipedia with "gentle expert oversight" and a focus on "credibility and quality, not just quantity". I hope we see more of this type of offering.

Perhaps Keen's most salient point is hidden in his moaning about how newspaper and music companies are losing revenues. I don't care about dinosaur business institutions losing money -- shame on them for not adapting to a new world. What concerns me is the potential loss of incentive for experts and artists to develop their knowledge and/or skills. We certainly DON'T want a world where nobody excels in knowledge or talent. Our world would suffer in this case. I believe that business models must be developed to reward true experts and artists who produce superior content (could be an article, a piece of music, a blog posting).  This doesn't mean there is no room for offerings from novices, dilettantes, or even morons.  The market will need to assign value to content based on the source, as well as "2.0 credentials" such as popularity, link frequency, and the like.

So rather than just trash Web 2.0,  let's put our collective intelligence into figuring out sustainable Web 2.0 business models where market forces are allowed to produce rational determinations of value and content is differentiated and rewarded appropriately.