A proud member of the "Cult of the Amateur" and making new friends

I interrupt the social media analysis on presidential candidates for some important side notes.

I would like to take this moment to declare to the entire blogosphere in an unabashed, proud and down right enthusiastic "voice" that I am a member of the CULT OF THE AMATEUR!

Ok, well...maybe not. Perhaps I fit into that elite group of experts who so carefully monitor and dole out snippets of information that is easily digestible by the masses of people with little to no intelligence who need the big companies to tell us what to think and when to think it.

What IS she talking about, you may wonder.

Here it is in a nutshell. Many thanks to PBS and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer this evening for the interview they conducted with author, blogger, and former silicon valley exec Andrew Keen on his book: The cult of the amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture. I caught just a piece of the interview, but then HAD to check it out online. A Google search revealed a blog by Andrew Keen which he is using to promote the book where he is writing about his interview experiences and other musings. I'm getting the book. I think I'm actually going to use excerpts in a class I'm developing for the spring semester. The excerpt I read on the website and the interview I heard have revealed to me that Keen clearly is a capitalist at heart. He likes the status quo where "experts" get paid to be experts, and where information is pushed out to the masses by trusted gate keepers like news editors, music executives and others we can trust who are paid by advertising revenue that supports jobs and, well the economy. He also clearly finds the concept of consumer generated content to be a threat to the well-ordered way it has always been and that information created by the masses (read amateur) to be read by the masses is creating a culture where truth no longer exists and it's a great big free for all. Welcome to the chaotic world of Web 2.0!

Bloggers and YouTubers and Social Networkers beware! You are a blight on society. You are killing our culture with your opinions, anonymity, and lack of expertise.

This is as far as I have gotten. When I get the book and read it I am sure I will enjoy it even more. It will fit perfectly into my course here at Champlain College, which is tentatively titled Technological Innovation, Cyberculture and Identity. I've been told the title needs to be jazzed up. Anyway, we'll be exploring the points of view of many individuals who have written about technological innovation and how they see it affecting our culture, society and individual identity. From Mumford and Zuboff and Vinge and Birkerts and now Keen -- what a rich and diverse group of perspectives. It will be fascinating to explore and adding a point of view like Keens will make this even more fun and provocative.

By the way, for more information you should check out Keen's blog! I suppose his blog is ok, since he is an expert and all. Certainly isn't one of the masses engaging in mindless blogging for no reason except to get his name out there and "publish" his opinions.

Now...on to making new friends...

One of the blogs I do follow every day is written by Rohit Bhargava, Vice President, Interactive Marketing at Ogilvy Public Relations. His blog, Influential Marketing provides great insight into the social media space that is unfolding every day. It's a moving target that I'm trying to keep up on and translate for my students and his blog helps me do that. Well I popped on to the blog today and saw that he has a facebook profile now! So, on a whim, I send him a FB message. Not to long after that he responded. I'm now "friends" with Rohit and I'm really psyched! He just posted that he is trying to figure out Twitter, so I am now following him there as well.

He's in the process of writing a book about social media and he's interested in what professors of marketing are doing in their classes. Well, it will be very interesting to correspond with him and to continue to watch and read as he makes progress on that book!

In the mean time, I've got to finish up these social media analysis before the election!

Playing the news...or news gaming....or....

Many thanks to Influential Marketing blogger Rohit Bhargava for this heads up on the new MSNBC Game NewsBreaker.

He points out that MSNBC is trying a new way to engage their audience around the news, bringing back a sense of discovery at a time when many (myself included) are using RSS to weed out anything we don't care about or have interest in (sports and entertainment, for example).

I of course had to check it out. Playing a game that requires me to make sure I get the ball to bounce back up (pong fans raise your hands) at the same time I try to catch the news headline as it falls towards the bottom of the screen. Hmmm....and you know what my reward is when I run out of shots? I get to read the news items I caught!

Changes the whole meaning of gaming the news, doesn't it? What do I think? You know, I really don't know what I think. I like the news. I read the news. I don't need a gimmick to get me to read the news and frankly I like RSS which allows me to get the news I care about without being inundated with stupid news about Anna Nichole and Paris Hilton or people standing in lines for the iPhone.

The results of my game? See for yourself!


Yeah...I know...it's a tiny screen shot.

Anyway as the ball moves about the screen hitting different colored tiles, news items begin to drop, and as I "catch" them you can see that the right hand column saves them for reading later.
Wow! I sure do have a lot of news captured!

Now, I know that the images are really too small for everyone to read, so I recreated the captured list so everyone can see the myriad of wonderful news items I have won the right to read.

Ok, so this is pretty small too. So here's the list:

Scientific smorgasbord on the web
Iraqi PM blasts U.S. after raid kills 26
Video: NBC: Poison ivy boom tied to warming
Experts: Docs need to call fat kids 'obese'
Quiz: How well do you know the princes?
NYPD: Bombs meant to inflict 'mass casualties'
Clement: Breakdown of unresricted free agents
Motorola selling RAZR2 phone in S. Korea
iPhone: Smartphone for the rest of us?
Fun Paula, Diva Paula co-star on Abdul's show
Jet engine flies at 10 times speed of sound
Israeli forces kill 11 in Gaza
Some still can't get their hands on Wii
Squash grown 10,000 years ago in Peru
Bloomberg had heart surgery in 2000
Rover may R.I.P. on Mars after its next descent
Bush, Putin all smiles as summit starts
Homicides soar in East Coast cities

Ok then. I was wrong. I forgot about Paula Abdul as a news item. *sigh* You know, I don't know what I would have done had I not found out that I could take a quiz to find out what I know about the princes and that there are poor people out there who can't get their hands on a Wii and that there is a breakdown of unrestricted free agents (whatever those are).

Sorry...I waxed sarcastic there for a minute.

I give MSNBC credit for having fun and trying to come up with unique ways of getting people to engage with the news. It's certainly different.

Of course...writing news stories that are actually news might help too (*cough*).

Well then, there you have it...I'll keep my RSS but will certainly see how Newsbreaker plays with my students. Perhaps I'm just not the target audience.

Oh...by the way, anyone notice the change in the CNN design for the website? Looks pretty good and certainly easier on my eyes.