Smart Pills


 


When this book first came out, I had a simple--and, I thought, conclusive--response to it. I forgot about it.
Oddly enough, long after the initial press releases had fluttered to the floor, MSNBC seeks to revive it in order to do one of those alarmist pieces that always work.
Andrew Keen writes his book, the Cult of the Amateur, saying that all this Web 2.0 stuff, MySpace and YouTube and Wikipedia (*cough*blogs*cough*) are dumbing America down, and devaluing expertise in favor of oh, just anybody saying whatever they want.

Question: is Andrew Keen an expert?
Answer: No. Degrees in Psychology, clinical work in learning and development? No. He taught political science for a while, and was involved in a wildly unsuccessful dot com bubble venture. He's worked for a number of Net companies.
He's a blogger.

That, I thought, was the end of the story. It has that sort of black-box-that-shuts-itself-off quality: "We should listen to experts!" "Are you an expert?" "No."
Click.

But evidently somebody wants that self-destructive meme alive. I'll speculate on their identities in a minute. Right now I want to tackle (and by that I mean with my Wolverine claws extended) the argument.

The first specious part of the argument is that ol' reliable Appeal To The Golden Age. There was a time when kids learned their lessons and were knowledgeable and competent! They knew all the Presidents and the State Capitols! They could diagram sentences and do square roots longhand! And now (In the words of our thirty-second president, Don Henley) all they want to do is dance!

It's stupid on the face of it: if there ever was a time when kids were smarter and well educated, it must have been the Wobegon Age, when all the children were above average. There have always been vast numbers of kids who despised learning in favor of sports, being popular, being cool, having sex and making money. There have always been another large group who, either by nature of the contact with a great teacher, love learning and delight in it. But to say that that second group ever predominated is misremembered nonsense.

I'm old enough to remember life without TV, without area codes, without Zip codes, without homogenized milk, fer crissake. I remember when we would look up whenever a plane flew by, and run out of the house if it was a jet. And I cry bullshit. Kids today are no more stupid than they were when I was one. I was a smart kid, and I knew the Presidents, the Capitols, and could recite the periodic table and the Mercury Astronauts and all our launch vehicles. My world felt smarter--my parents supported me, I sought out friends who liked what I liked, and it sure felt different than the Disney Channel--but there were parts of my kids universe that were no different from the current Disney Channel. I received no more respect for being smart than kids receive today.
It's possible for smart people to make this mistake--but not if they think about it. More likely whoever is appealing to a golden age is selling you something.

Yes, I realize I'm attacking a book I haven't read. That's why I'm attacking general principles rather than specific flaws in his argument. and the next general principle I want to attack is the Bait and Switch.

Now the MSNBC article headlines MySpace and YouTube as 'dumbing down America' through its Cult of the Amateur. Now this may be unfair to Andrew's argument contained in the book, and for that I apologize. But I would dearly like to know what the expert-based versions of MySpace and YouTube would be. Yenta the matchmaker? CBS? They are, true, the most annoying aspects of the current Net to older folks, occupying the place Instant Messaging did a few cycles ago. But they are not places to learn things. They are not degraded forms of information: they have nothing to do with the republics that made up the Soviet Union or George Eliot. These are in there purely for their annoyance value. (This may be MSNBC and not Mr. Keen, I realize.)

Keen's beef is much more with Wikipedia and (although it is resolutely not mentioned) the blogosphere. This is where his general argument makes the most sense: that instead of going to someone with credentials, who has passed a vetting process, kids go to just anybody--like Wikipedia. Like some anonymous blog.

And here's where things begin to get clearer--and the full ugliness of the lineaments resolves itself. Wikipedia is irregular and not always completely accurate--but the Britannica is online, scads and scads of university archives, as well as personal pages and blogs of those allegedly beleaguered experts. But is Mr. Keen (Tracier than Most People) uttering an impassioned plea that you not go to that Devil Wikipedia when you want to find out about Franz Lehár , but please to someplace reputable ?

This seems ridiculous--and close to incomprehensible--on a number of levels: 1) Wikipedia is not driving the Britannica off the stage; 2) A slapdash paper on Lehár is not going to change someone's further life; 3) There were mail order term papers back hen I was in school, as well as Cliff's notes and the Masterplots volumes; and 4) The Lehár expert has tenure.
It seems to be a puzzling thing to write a book about: a book-length plea for real reference works? The diminishing respect for professors of Chinese Sculpture and Romance Philology ?

Until--ah, now I get it.
Instead of getting their news from Reputable Sources like the New York Times and MSNBC, instead of absorbing what the Dean of the Washington Press Corps has to say, those dirty hippies are getting their news from places like Daily Kos and Eschaton! People with No Credentials Whatsoever!

Yep, it's us nasty bloggers ag'in.

Now Mr. Keen may indignantly deny it, because of course this isn't meant to be a frontal attack, but just to further diminish and discredit The Threat. But the gun is pointed in this direction.

And here's the other part of it: expertise has been under attack repeatedly, and with persistence and vigor--but not from Web 2.0. The worldwide scientific community issues report after report on global warming--eminent scientists bring their expertise and intelligence to the public sphere--and are derided by Neil Cavuto and Glenn Beck. The expertise of evolutionary biologists is equated with religious proselytizers. And more to the point, professional weapons inspectors are sneered at and academic Middle East experts are ignored and debased so we can invade Iraq. Why are you getting your information from Juan Cole when you could be getting it from Wolf Blitzer?

The simple answer to this (dare I say it?) disingenuous lament is the other aspect of Web 2.0: feedback. An unsupported assertion by a blogger gets refuted in comment and with a link. And bloggers are not always kids--in many cases (me!) they're older than Mr. Keen--and sometimes those very derided experts.

True experts become so by strenuous battle, not by anointing. Academic papers are fought over in the public arena, and those who have proved the rigor of their research and the integrity of their arguments are given their epaulettes. It's not all that dissimilar from the blogosphere.

What it is dissimilar from is the current state of our media. Privilege is given to people with no track record: those people make false and easily refutable statements and never retract them--and vital stories are sat on for months and months.

Unlike the experts in science, history, and the arts, the 'experts' are not vetted, not peer reviewed, not tested on their expertise. And they routinely make errors that in a discipline that took its expertise seriously, wold have them drummed out of the corps and thrown overboard.

But there they are. And by their continued presence at the magazines and media organizations befoul the reputation of those organizations. The American people are subject, night after night, day after day, to slapdash, unprofessional, distorted news reporting and public affairs discussion, and after lie after lie has been exposed, continue to speak as if they were experts.

Keen's indignation is not that kids are chatting on MySpace or posting videos of their hamsters on YouTube. He's pining for the return of the rule of the experts, who would tell them that Saddam had WMD's and Katrina was the fault of Ray Nagin, and that we have the greatest health care system in the world, and we'd believe them!

My god! What's wrong with us? Why won't we eat that yummy chocolate ice cream?

The old joke:
"These are smart pills."
"Really"
"Yeah. Have some."
"Ptui! These taste like rabbit turds!"
"See? You're smarter already!"

Stupider is not what we're getting. Unfortunately for Mr. Keen.

Posted: Wednesday - June 20, 2007 at 08:55 PM        

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