Cult of the Amateur

Reading the first few chapters of Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen really opened my mind.  I completely agree with his points that the Internet is depleting the authenticity of experts and that the Internet is a place to advertise yourself. Because the title of this book is the cult of the amateur, I think Keen's major issue with the Internet is that the expert getting more and more distant away and the amateurs are taking over. "The cult of the amateur has made it increasingly difficult to determine the difference between reader and writer, between artist and spin doctor, between art and advertisement, between amateur and expert. The result? The decline of the quality and reliability of the information we receive, thereby distorting, if not outrightly corrupting, our national civic conversation." When you visit a website, you are never positive who is sitting on the other side of the screen, who made that website, or who designed a scam that you are about to participate in. When you visit Wikipedia, yes you are getting a lot of information, but what is the use of that information if it is not supported or written by the experts on that particular search subject.  After reading Keen's rant about how people are more likely to use websites like free amateur sourced Wikipedia rather than using expert verified websites like Britannica or other online encyclopedias, I made Britannica a bookmark so that I can leave it to the paid experts to give me my information.
Keen's other argument that the Internet is just a place to project yourself to others is very relevant. There are thousands and thousands of blogs out there, thousands of facebook pages, and myspace and twitter pages. Each page for a different person trying to get their information out to others. "The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of a hundred million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves." This statement only speaks the truth. People are so obsessed with updating their facebook pictures, or changing their statuses every next move. Personally, I think that everyone is so obsessed with their image, or how they are in cyberspace that they have no time to read up on anyone else's lives. People are trying to project their best image of themselves via Internet but no one cares to look at anyone else because everyone is so self-absorbed.