Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

I'm a monkey: spot the 5 differences.

The most controversial speaker here at Online Educa Berlin was no doubt Andrew Keen, the author of 'The cult of the amateur'. Every hype or (r)evolution needs its Antichrist, and Andrew Keen is very good at crying out his disgust on the monkeys and children that are running the show in the web 2.0 world, instead of Harvard professors, and the danger of sites such as Google and Wikipedia - all founded by hippies. I actually enjoyed his keynote. A story is not complete without its other side, and he certainly is good at counterbalancing all the euphoria around web 2.0 and the democratization of the Internet. "The monkeys are running the show."

In my humble opinion, what is going on here is the defense of relevance of expertise. For a very long time, expertise has been a monopoly, decided by the ones-who-knew. Publishers and others decided who was an expert and who was not, and what was worth hearing and what was not. It's a logical flaw to think expertise will necessarily bring greater truth to the table in that model. I'm a Belgian in a foreign country at the moment, and not a day goes by without people asking me about the political state of Belgium (don't worry, we have 6 other governments that still work, just the federal one takes a long time to take off, it will happen, don't worry.) I've only seen correct facts and analysis of that in the Dutch newspaper, other even quality journals like the New York Times get facts all wrong. So that is the world of expertise.
That world now has a competitor: the monkeys that blog, write Wikipedia pages etc. Competition is good. Expertise shouldn't have the monopoly on the truth. To me what Andrew Keen's point is about is the defense of the expertise against the wisdom of the crowds. I like the new world where both have their place and will compete for relevance. Hey, the experts have a cost disadvantage and a quality advantage. It's a fair fight. In the first years of this 2.0 thing traditional expertise-relying business share will drop, but it will remain relevant next to us monkeys. We are just finding a new balance in a competition for relevance. Personally, it excites me.

So I'm one of the monkeys... I blog, therefore I'm a monkey.

Labels: andrew keen, blog, cult of the amateur, online educa