The Cult of the Amateur

The 1^st speaker

Andrew Keen author of the book ‘The Cult of the Amateur’

Key points; he says the bloggers and podcasters are

·      Debasing and undermining our cultural heritage

·      He talks about the democratisation of media in terms of digital narcissism

·      As worthless and self-indulgent and to creating a form of cultural relativism  (cultural worth in the eye of the beholder)

·      He says that this is having a detrimental effect on the professional media industries such as journalism (newspaper sales, the music industry etc)

·      He talks about a flattened media a phrase coined by Thomas Friedman

Jimmy Wells (founder of the Wikipedia) calls for an ‘online code of conduct’

Other opposing points talk about a culture which is evolving? What do you think?

How much time do you spend on the internet?

YouTube

Messenger

Facebook

Myspace???? Lol we’ve seen you!!!! could you be accused of cultural narcissism?

The term narcissism refers to the personality trait of egotism, which includes the set of character traits concerned with self-image ego. The terms narcissism, narcissistic, and narcissist are often used as pejoratives, denoting vanity, conceit, egotism or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.

The name "narcissism" is derived from Greek mythology. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus pined away and changed into the flower that bears his name, the narcissus.

Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood in terms of his or her own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes." but did not actually coin the term "cultural relativism." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was first used by Alain Locke in 1924 to describe Robert Lowie's "extreme cultural relativism", found in the latter's 1917 book Culture and Ethnology The term became common among anthropologists after Boas' death in 1942, to express their synthesis of a number of ideas Boas had developed.