Noble Amateur revised edition

In the reading of the Cult of the Amateur, by Andrew Keen, he makes the argument against what he calls the “noble amateur.”  Keen argues that the noble amateur posses the threat of “killing our culture” by increasing democratic participation of hobbyists with no formal education on the subject they are covering. Keen argues that this would lead to a decline in beneficial information.  Keen is concerned that amateurs undermine the professionals and the institutions that educate them. 

            Keen provides many examples to elaborate on his argument such as the problems with citizen journalism and Wikipedia.  While Keen sees any form of amateurism as being detrimental to the culture, that is not always the case.  The Ushahidi application is a great example of how amateurism can benefit the culture.  The application originally was started as a blog of citizen journalism, and evolved into a system that greatly enriched the culture.  The application was originally a blog called the Kenyan Pundit, which was crafted by Ory Okolloh, a citizen journalist, to provide information on the violence occurring in Kenya during political unrest that had shut down the printed press. 

            The Ushahidi system is a mapping application that allows fellow amateurs to upload points on a map where civil unrest is taking place.  Two programmers who read Okolloh’s blog and wanted to help developed the mapping technology.  This shows that Keen’s ideas on amateurs being a threat to undermining the culture, when in reality these amateurs are providing the culture with a new and influential program.  This citizen journalism in this situation doesn’t pose a threat to professional institutions but instead developed a now worldwide system of mapping crisis.  In fact, Ushahidi actually works together with professionals such as media organization and international humanitarian bodies. By providing the areas of violence, news organizations can get there faster and report on the story.  This program wasn’t just confounded to Kenya and instead provides areas throughout the world with crisis information and locations on google maps, for instance places with severe droughts use Ushahidi to coordinate relief efforts.  This goes against Keen’s concern on amateur’s posting false or poor information, in reality amateurs actually seem to enjoy benefiting the community, rather than attempting to harm it.