The Cult of the Patronizing Git

Posted on | June 8, 2007 | 5 Comments

I ordered Andrew Keen’s book – The Cult of the Amateur – from Amazon yesterday on the basis of a few posts I had read about it. I then cancelled my order on reading this patronizing nonsense from Keen himself:

“There are two kinds of people on these media. There are high-end people, like me and Charlie [Leadbetter], who know how to read our way around, who know how to read critically. And then there are the masses, the people who are increasingly unschooled and uncritical and unknowledgeable and rely on the truth of a blog as much as the truth of a newspaper.”

The poor soul obviously believes that the ‘high-end’ genie can somehow be put back in the bottle. The fact that he can bring the words ‘truth’ and ‘newspaper’ together in such an uncritical fashion tells me I have nothing to learn from him – and I certainly could not bring myself to contribute £8.57 to his or his publisher’s coffers.

Postscript – I should have made explicit note of the fact that I took the Keen quote above from a Comment is Free post by Mick Fealty of sluggerotoole.com.

Technorati Tags: andrew keen, cult of the amateur, the guardian, comment is free

Category: books, education, media

Comments

5 Responses to “The Cult of the Patronizing Git”

John Connell: the blog » Blog Archive » Gardner in Five Minds
June 13th, 2007 @ 12:47 pm

[...] After cancelling the Andrew Keen book, I decided instead to order Howard Gardner’s new book: Five Minds for the Future. It arrived yesterday and I have just started reading it, so no doubt I will be giving my thoughts anon. [...]
John Connell: the blog » Blog Archive » The Arrogant Imperium
June 14th, 2007 @ 9:49 am

[...] The Cult of the Patronizing Git06/13/2007 12:47 pm1 Comment [...]
Teaching Generation Z » Blog Archive » Teachers Are Experts
June 17th, 2007 @ 1:43 pm

[...] I think I have been sadly mistaken. Two clues that I have misread the appeal of Web 2.0 tools to the average teacher have cropped up and are worth considering. Firstly, via John Connell, an article that bemoans the impact of Web 2.0 and foretells of a dumbing down of expertise pointing to Wikipedia and blogs as the proof of the new mediocrity of information. It’s an interesting read – a clearly sympathetic article supporting a book that points out all that is wrong with participatory culture. It does smack of yearning for the good old days – when you just knew that the nightly news would tell the truth about the world, when knowledge was contained in the Dewey system and university professors delivered their lectures on their latest findings without question. John has continued to investigate this issue in further posts and Doug Noon’s recent post pulls apart some of the associated implications with greater insight and intellect than I could possibly muster. [...]
Jane Nicholls
June 17th, 2007 @ 8:21 pm

My goodness! Why do we bother blogging? Obviously from this person’s point of view only those people who can have a collection edited and peer review are worthy of having an opionion. The point I think he is missing is that having an opinion is only a small part of blogging. He has forgotten about the conversation.
John Connell
June 18th, 2007 @ 12:41 am

Spot on, Jane. What a great blog you have – how have I missed it for so long? I hope your sabbatical is going well!