Slashdot Mirror
Amateur Revolution?
Ant writes "Fast Company's article mentions that networks of amateurs are displacing the pros and spawning some of the greatest innovations from from astronomy to computing. Rap inflects global popular culture from music to fashion. Linux poses a real threat to Microsoft. The Sims is among the most popular computer games ever. These far-flung developments have all been driven by Pro-Ams -- committed, networked amateurs working to professional standards. Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades."
It just goes to show that while money can motivate people, passion for the work is a better motivator.
42
...where does this guy pull this crap? A few isolated events and he's predicting a world-changing trend? Geeze...
Blar.
The Sims is created and supported by EA, a company which has become like the Microsoft / Cisco / Computer Associates of the gaming world: they buy up as many companies as possible so they can profit off the licenses.
The Sims is an excellent game and has a very large fanbase, but don't discount the influence of its very powerful parent company.
For more information, click here.
We anarchists have been talking about this phenomena for many years. We refer to it as DIY: Do-It-Yourself. Linux and amatuer astronomy are examples of anarchism in action--international networks of volunteers and hobbyists cooperating together and providing mutual aid and solidarity to each other. It's interesting that Fast Company has finally gotten around to providing a capitalist spin on this phenomenon, but otherwise we're talking about anarchism in action. Which is one reason why major corporations fear these movements, especially Microsoft.
And it has now become the same money-hungry scheme that the rest of music is. Silver teeth, 80 gram bling, expensive cars, big houses, "hoes", problems with the law, etc. I don't see the difference between rap stars and more "traditional" music. I give this one 0/100.
It doesn't matter what genre you're talking about, there are going to be groups that exploit their popularity the way you said above (bitches and hoes), and there are going to be genuine artists. My roomate forced me to listen to one of his favorite hip-hop groups last weekend. Their entire album was freestyle, but I didn't hear anything about "bling", "ho's" or cars. He was a genuine artist more interested in the realities of life than hip hop fame, which is what it boils down to for every genre.
If I've learned anything from slashdot, an amateur is one who begins with "I Am Not A Laywer/Doctor/Baker/Candlestick Maker" and then proceeds to pretend that he is.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I sppreciate the sentiment of the article, but many contributors to open source are hardly 'amateurs'. Plenty of OS contributors are paid for their work.
I'll take this mean 'amateurs' in the same way that the atheletes at the olympics are 'amateurs'. Amateurs, sure... but they are also at the top of their craft.
This story is the product of what we in the journalism industry call a "slow news day".
But seriously, what I think the article is hinting towards(although masks it through mountains of hype) is that there is a lot of undiscovered talent in the world - across industries. These people are like the underdogs now, but with help from middle to upper management, can bring their new ideas to life.
So let's not jump to conclusions about who is and isn't going to shape society, hmm?
Do you have to be an MCSE to be considered a computing professional?
...this coming from a person who is attending a two year tech school taught by MSCE certified amateurs.
Geez, not at all. At best I'd say 1% aren't amateurs...
Get your Unix fortune now!
I don't think this is something new. Think about punk music. I think it was a reaction to professionalim.
In electronics, for instance, people have been home-brewing radios, amplifiers, computers, etc.. for seemingly forever.
yes, but for how long will these same things still be "allowed" by government. this is a little biased toward life in the united states, but it's a trend we're seeing more and more widespread. the point is that it's becoming harder and harder to be an "amateur," especially in technological areas.
i love hardware hacking, personally, but when it becomes illegal to own an appliance that "may" be capable of copying copyrighted media.....how many are going to take the risk?
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
"Rap, for one, started as do-it-yourself music among lower-income black men from distressed urban neighborhoods, recorded by artists on inexpensive equipment and distributed on handmade tapes by local labels. Yet within two decades, rap has become the dominant popular music across the world."
Two decades ago... when Run DMC "walk this way" with Aerosmith, right? Can't get much more amateur than that.
Rap? "... the dominant popular music across the world." I don't think so. Maybe if you include the various ins-and-outs of hip-hop and pop-hop, you get closer... but still, I wouldn't call it dominant.
"Likewise, according to one estimate, 90% of the content in The Sims is created by a Pro-Am sector of The Sims ' playing community."
I'd guess at least 90% of the worlds video games are created by amateurs. Doesn't mean that they have 90% of the audience, not by a long shot.
It doesn't help that the article's author is a one trick pony... For months, years, whatever, Charles Leadbeater has been doing this "Amareur Revolution" crying, just check google. I'm not sure what would make this article stand out.
"People just don't care enough about politics and social entrepeneurship."
n in gReading/howprwor.htm
I think you'll find that's because their voices are unheard. In America, in Britain, your vote doesn't count. Turnout and engagement is correspondingly low.
If you take a look at the democracies of Europe however, people are far more engaged in politics and the turnouts during elections are on average far higher than the US or UK. That's because their voice can be heard, every vote counts...
The difference is proportional representation:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/Beginn
Deleted
In much the same way that over-paying 20-something year old ameteur html coders did not create a "new economy" so this too will fizzle.
Most notably, Rap has not been an ameteur medium since the time when public enemy became big and the labels decided to push it. Unless you are an affancido (sp?) of Rap, none of the people you have heard of are 'ameteurs' except in the artifically created sense that eminem, vanilla ice, the village people and the monkees are 'ameteurs'. Rap has been a slick, professional and tightly-controlled form of expression for almost two fucking decades now.
Mod me flamebait if you like, but as someone who's lived through the "grunge", the "alternative" and the "internet" revolutions this -to me- stinks to high heaven of yet more masturbatory and self-congratulatory hot air.
Which is appropriate, as the "revolution" being touted signifies nothing.
There is no way you can compare many of the tech folks working on various projects (e.g. Linux) as "amateurs". Most of the developers on these projects are indeed professionals, the simple act of working on a non-corp sponsered app doesn't make one an amateur. That's like saying the the NBA "dream team" members are amateur's by virtue of them playing on a non-professional team at the time.
come on people :
"Rap inflects global popular culture from music to fashion"
is somehow a sign of the world being caught up in a revolution? Rap is a sign that easy-to-manage concepts go over well with the populace. Hip-hop? Yeah, some of it is tolerable, but none of it will be viewed as masterpieces in years to come. There is no skill or effort in most of it. The people that create and listen to it are not capable of the introspection necessary to create masterpieces or even view them in the proper light later.
You can call it racist, elitist, or whatever you want, but rappers, rap "music", and rap fans are not leading any cultural revolution. They are enforcing the status quo. They buy their CDs, their videos, their jerseys, their 200 dollar sneakers, and keep the fatcats laughing all the way to the bank. The only social activities that they participate in are the ones espoused by their idols, namely drinking, getting high, killing each other, and in general being a goddamned moron. They are not like the 60's and 70's, where the music reflected a movement ( be it anti-war, civil rights, whatever the fuck ). They are cashing in on their stupid fans, promoting ignorance, all under a guise of a movement. If you think the corp execs haven't figured out a whole new level of subterfuge and manipulation, you're kidding yourself.
We're not dealing with the people who thought American Bandstand was about as wild as it would come. We're dealing with MBA-touting, marketing-aware, bloodsucking weasels that are more than willing to take a crack dealer who can string together a few rhyming compositions, give him world-class studio time, and sell him and his merchandise to a bunch of fools. They'll tell you it's a revolution, that you're changing the world, but you know what, money talks, bullshit walks. You're still making the same old conservative power mongers, they've just got their monkey-dancing rappers and dumbshit teen-idols out there turning tricks for them. I suppose I'm happier seeing conservative old white men running things than I am seeing crack-dealing uneducated rap stars, but it's still a far cry from a real option for progress.
We've already lost the media. It's a cash machine, nothing else.
The revolution will not be televised. And it will not be led by anyone named after currency.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
That's it. That's all there is to it.
There's the implication of better quality work or a better attitude, but in reality that has nothing to do with professional/amateur status.
Deleted
In a larger scale analysis, the speed of targeted communications has always determined the speed of advancement throughout history.
Examples abound:
- Greek military advancements (Phalanx) - after city-states bonded, writing popular
- Renaissance - after plague's social dislocation allowed workers to travel, talk
- Renaissance (multiple causes)- after Guttenburg / printing press allowed/instigated mass literacy
- Galileo's experiments - after mail is regularly possible between him and many other scientists
- Industrial revolution - after enough discoveries, shared by scientists mailing each other, built on each other's work to create steam power and other major inventions
- Edison's "invention factory" putting bright minds and enough tools all in one Menlo Park building complex
- FireFly TV show - computing machinery advanced enough to simulate other worlds coupled with good writing (though, the Profoundly Evil (Murdoch's) Fox 'targeted' communication with NeoCon fundamentalists means 'advancement' sometimes == social regression / repression)
This list is incomplete but gives an idea.When people can talk with other people interested in the same things, easily, quickly, and in an organized manner, the rate of change (advancement, usually)(viewed through their eyes) can really increase.
This is a danger as well as a blessing. Every society has malcontents / miscreants / criminals, and (just remember junior high school) sometimes the only thing holding them back is the encouragement of one really inventive and charismatic bad guy/gal.
I, for one, welcome our newfound Pro-Am Inventor Overlords!
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Many of these people are not really amateurs. Some of them are making a living at these pursuits, although admittedly not as good a living as the so-called professionals.
What is happening is that cheap technology is negating the advantage that Big Corporate Money gives to corporations or to business people who have some serious capital, either personal monies or loaned monies.
I cannot overstate how great this makes me feel or how important it is.
I see much of human interaction in the economic marketplace, in the world of employment and jobs and commerce, as akin to interactions in animal society, especially the way that social animals interact, and in animal sibling interactions.
In America, at least, it all comes to nature, red of tooth and claw.
What happens is that the more powerful entities use current advantage, monetary advantage, to snuff out competition, and then, ironically, they call it the "free market."
You see many examples of this: one young male in the lion pride was get bigger than the others, and use that advantage to drive off the other males, and then mate with the females.
But cheap technology is like some sort of vitamin supplement that evens up the competitors.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Obviously I haven't bothered to read the article but I am fairly sure that whatever field you care to mention was built from the work of dedicated amateurs or professionals in one field developing others as a hobby in their spare time.
The designations "amateur" and "professional" are fairly meaningless anyway, do the amateur's ( presumably ) discussed in the article dedicate any less time to their work or are they significantly less intelligent ?
In fact I think the real distinction is purely financial, professionals are funded for the work they do which when things move beyond a stage where normal people can't afford the tools to continue working in it it is obviously going to be dominated by professionals. I suspect the real driver behind this "Amateur revolution" is simply that the tools required are either very cheap or free for use by anyone who wants to use them.
A professional does the job, even when they don't want to do. An amateur does it whenever they feel like it.
Being a professional doesn't mean you're any good at it (e.g. look at all the "professionals" in our fields (IT/Med/Law/Bus/etc) that have degrees, yet they're as dumb as a box-of-rocks).
Getting paid to be a professional is strictly a bonus.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
That amateurs can contribute is, in large part, due to the steady price deflation of equipment, especially equipment based on semiconductors.
And this is due to massive multinational corporations spending billions on R&D and infrastructure. The amateur computer geeks would be virtually nonexistent if giants like MS, Intel, and various Asian chipmakers weren't commoditizing the industry. I don't think that I've ever seen anybody making semiconductors in their garage...
I don't respond to AC's.
I don't believe that getting paid is enough to make one a professional, for two reasons,
Most countries have recongnised "Professional Bodies" who confer professional status on members who demonstrate that they have sufficient knowledge and experience - e.g. The BCS, IEEE etc. These bodies also require members to adhere to professional standards and codes of practice which is similar to professing an oath.
So a professional is someone who has had that status conferred to them, whether or not they get paid for a particular piece of work.
No one would suggest that Linus is an amateur, the Article is wrong in suggesting that work done for free is amatuer.
Art is the mathematics of emotion
And musicians have been operating like this for 100s if not 1000s of years. The amature "revolution" in music is hardly a new thing.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
You see in the normal world, as you use and learn technology - you build a foundation that becomes more and more valuable and needed over time.
But we do not live in the normal world - we live in a world where there is proprietary and non proprietary technology, and for the short term there is always intense pressure to use and learn the proprietary stuff. But this stuff always makes you obsolete, and gives you nothing to build on over the long term.
The truth is that it is always in peoples best interest to know the non proprietary stuff that they can build on over the long term. Traditionally we have had college to build a non proprietary foundation to bypass the problems caused in a proprietary society - but now thanks in part to the internet - we have things like unrestricted free access to information, we have access freely to things like Linux.
The rules have changed, and this is just one of the symptoms. The barriers to bypass the proprietary problems have dropped, and the effects will likely shake the system to it's knees.
Charles Lindbergh was a mail pilot before he made the first flight ever across the atlantic (L.I. to Paris).
All the original "elite hackers" of the early information age were total amateurs.
Every "professional" was once an amateur. Our culture has come to identify a slick suit, fancy title and wad of cash with skill and ability. Being a "pro" means you have proven yourself to the mainstream, maybe that you were a better amateur than some others, maybe that you were in the right place at the right time. Years of experience are good, yes. So is imagination, fresh perspective, and untapped potential.
A point? uh... (digs furiously) uh...raincheck?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
No they most certainly will not. Not unless these "amateurs" get the election process changed to a reality TV style format. People just don't care enough about politics and social entrepeneurship. They want to sit at home and drug their brains with TV. That's all they want out of life. House, two SUVs, a jetski, and 2.75 kids.
Stop getting all your facts about the population from the internet, step out of your moms house and look around the big blue room (no not IBMs wiring closet). Politics is fronted by the elected officials they make the decisions we want or they do not. Organized groups can have a HUGE impact on those officials starting with the not so good example of the 'flash mobs' at the RNC. People will learn though what is and is not effective. I am on several political lists and when issues I care about are mentioned I and other like minded souls respond. I have written enough times to my congressman that when I met him at a public library luncheon he recognized my name. He told me that writing a congressman with your views is like casting more than ten votes...why because less than one in 10 people write them (and yes that is write as in on paper). Imagine if in your hometown you organized 20 people to write your congressman on issues. That would carry real power and influence.
The "amateur revolution" is hardly new ... in fact a brief look back at most pop culture / technology revolutions would reveal that those responsible were barely out of highschool / college.
... when in general almost all popular music comes from artists in their late teens.
... when in fact the top operating systems today have their roots in college dropouts / 20 somethings who you would hardly call experts.
...
The article talks about Rap music
The article talks about Linux
The article talks about games. How old was John Carmak when he build his first 3D gaming engine?
Fresh ideas coming from "amateurs" is the norm
He was a genuine artist more interested in the realities of life than hip hop fame, which is what it boils down to for every genre.
But is this the exception or the rule? If it is the exception, then this is a common mistake trying to prove by example (you can't prove something by example, unless you exhaustively use every example and they all hold to your original hypothesis).
For every one of your example, I can probably show three examples of folks who get into it for the "benefits" of fame.
The definition of a professional and amateur is very thin.
Any Amateur that does things in a professional way IS a professional.
no matter what the weenies with their overpriced degrees and "certifications" say.
What makes a Professional is a mindset.
I think of myself as a professional and therefore I AM a professional.
Amateur astronomers have always had a big impact, there is nothing new going on here. Many comets are found by amateurs, as (until recently, when the process was automated) were many extra-galactic supernovae. Likewise, many amateurs have devoted a great deal of time to monitoring variable stars.
In many cases, these observations are not done by professionals because the return on each *individual* observation is small, and they could not justify the time. But there is singificant synergy, since a researcher interested in (say) variable stars has access to many different light curves from each star thanks to the work of amateurs.
The technology used by amatuers has improved, with cheap CCDs and computers -- but the same technology has also made professional instruments much more effective than they were in the days of photographic plates and clockwork drives.
To my mind (as a theoretical physicist who started out as an amateur astronomer in junior high) an analagous activity is bird watching: professional ornithologists use a huge amount of use of data gathered by amateur "birders", who are often exceptionally knowledgeable about the species they look at, and who gather data from a love of observing the natural world. But this is not high tech, so Fast Company didn't see it.
Yeah man! Just like Microsift did to Linux! Oh wait...They haven't crushed Linux dispite having billions of dollars and a huge company of full of highly-paid professionals.
I guess it's pretty hard to compete with people who don't need any backing.
Well I am not an amatuer (IANAA) but I think that being an amatuer is a lot more complicated than that. You have to know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to really know what you're doing. You have to talk down to people and arrogantly believe that you are funny / insightful / interesting / informative. You have to think that even though you aren't a professional at what you are talking about, and that professionals of that type do post on slashdot, that your amatuer opinion somehow matters. Also, The mods give you points for it.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Rap music wasn't promoted by "Pro-Ams -- committed, networked amateurs" unless you mean sneakerNet. Decidedly low-tech, ghetto kids invented rap with turntables from garbage cans, because they couldn't afford any instruments, and no one in the Bronx was throwing away guitars. They couldn't even get on the radio for years, so playgrounds and cassette tapes were their medium. By the time even analog FM radio started playing them, they were already a cultural institution, which radio and video networks (like MTV and ClearChannel) have largely destroyed, transforming cool smartass party kids into glossy spokesmodels product for global consumer brands. Some "rap" is still bubbling underground, with its original spirit, riding both social and digital networks.
--
make install -not war
What the stories author failed to understand is that these Pro-Ams have always been around, its just that now the author is an adult and has opportunities to join adult organizations.
Take for instance Ham radio operators, one of the more interesting things to do is joining huge worldwide networks to "pass traffic" (messages) from place to place. MARS, the Military Affiliate Radio System is Amateurs used to pass personal messages from military personnel to their families back in the US. This still is used but has really fallen by the wayside with cell phones and e-mail and the like.
Starting in the 60's Ham radio operators launched a series of satellites constructed by unpaid amateurs (www.amsat.org) AMSAT-OSCAR 7, launched in 1974 still being listed as semi-operational. These amateurs have since 1961 launched a series of 50 other satellites.
Amateurs and groups of amateurs a century ago in the 1910's fostered a world wide revolution called the aeroplane. Some of their groups like the Aviator Club in France still exist.
Voulunteer organizations run by people that I guarantee look at the organization in a professional light are nothing new. Fraternal organizations like Elks or KOC or OddFellows, or any of a thousand others (http://www.exonumia.com/art/society.htm) all have declining and aging memberships. This is not because people are not doing the same kind of joining or voulunteering, Its just that instead of putting on the goofy hat and going to the lodge on friday night, everyone is putting on the goofy hat and joing the rest of their StarCraft clan on-line on friday night.
Even the authors own point that some of these Pro-Ams are astronomers is foolish. Perhaps 99 percent of all astronomers EVER have been amateurs, and many comets have been discovered over the past 100 years by amateurs or groups of amateurs. Are these amateurs working any less professionally than somone being paid for the work?
There are millions of small groups of unpaid amateurs producing research and journals and inventions and discoveries. To think that there is anything unique or new about this is just plan wrong. The author of the article has made the fatal error that many young people make of believing that they have discovered some truism of the human condition that their and only their generation has come up with, and that anything more than 20 years old is worthless. Perhaps the author should remember how his own industry came to be and remember that no one got paid to run the Homebrew Computer Club.
Reality is all that stuff that doesn't care if you believe in it or not.--Solomon Short
If I've learned anything from slashdot, an amateur is one who begins with "I Am Not A Laywer/Doctor/Baker/Candlestick Maker" and then proceeds to pretend that he is.
It's this kind of professional elitism that makes me crazy. Knowledge is not all or nothing. I am not a doctor, but I know as much or more about my own skin/autoimmune disease than many dermatologists. How can this be? I haven't been to med-school! I've done the research, that's how. Since this problem affects me, I focus on it in ways that a dermatologist can't. He's trying to be all things to all people, whereas I'm only researching the specific things that matter to me. This is true for all subjects. With sufficient interest, you can learn about anything. Who the fuck cares what piece of paper you have on your wall? This is not to say that I should be operating on people. But at the same time you can't discount my own opinions on the subjects which I actually know. I've never been formally trained, or worked as a mechanic. I guess I better stop fixing my own cars too! Sheesh!
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Well, perhaps democratization is not the precise word. But the *means* of doing professional level work is more widespread than ever before.
In general (despite a recent local trend away from these achievements), people are more educated, people have more leisure time, and people have the means to acquire higher-quality tools and equipment. This is mostly a result of technology becoming ubiquitous and cheap.
Consider making movies: before the late 70s, a home movie maker could affordably use Super-8 format. The cameras were moderately expensive and had limited functionality. Professionals were shooting 35mm or 70mm on cameras that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Today, even some of the studios shoot on high-end video, and the quality difference between the high-end and the consumer low-end is not huge (since the "ama-pros" don't necessarily distribute on film stock, I'm willing to call video and film equivalent, even knowing the differences). But I haven't even mentioned the most important part: the editing. Nonlinear editing? Even ten years ago, that started around $20k. Today, it comes with any iMac.
Similarly, anyone can get an acceptable recording studio in their house for under $2k.
People can afford to own power tools that my father's generation could only dream about.
I could go on, but I think the point is made. Of course there are amateurs doing pro-level work. There always have been! But now the means are readily available to open up the opportunities to far more people; it should be no surprise that more people are taking those opportunities. That these same people are having ideas that hadn't been thought of by the "Pros" seems almost self-evident. The more minds on a subject, the more ideas.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
According to my Oxford dictionary, the original meaning of amateur was "One who loves or is fond of" - from the French amare (to love). I like this definition - I think that an intrinsic love for the subject is what distinguishes an amateur from a professional. An amateur could be paid, but would keep working even if they are not.
A similar word, usually used in a derogative way is dilettante - "A lover of the fine arts; originally one who cultivates them for the love of them rather than professionally, and so = amateur as opposed to professional ... later applied ... to one who interests himself in an art or science merely as a pastime and without serious aim or study." (OED)
It is based on the French word dilettare - to delight.
Compare this with the word Professional which my OED tells me is based on the word Profession - "The declaration, promise or vow made by one entering a religious order; hence the action of entering such an order; the fact of being professed in a religious order."
So we have two pictures - the professional who has made a serious, solid, institutional commitment; and the amateur/dilettante who is in it purely for the love and delight. It is not surpising that the professionals look down on the amateurs and mistrust their pleasure. It is also not surprising that the history of science and technology is full of breakthroughs made by amateurs.
I agree with the premise of the article - as we become richer and live longer lives more and more of us are able to spend time indulging our love and delight and make significant contributions as amateurs.
The greatest detective ever, Sherlock Holmes, was an amateur...
The advantage that amateurs have is that they don't have managers in their face 8 hours a day telling them what to do; they don't need to brown nose or participate in other corporate-specific games; they are free to take more experiemental risks since there is no capital wasted on marketing, advertising, stock options, etc; amateurs are free to focus their time on interesting projects, not just what the focus group says they will pay for.
In the end, the talent the professional has isn't what pays the bills--it's simply his willingness to practice his craft in a corporate environment that adds value.
That said, the cheaper and improved communication enabled by recent technological developments, notably the Internet, has allowed talented amateurs to exchange ideas and cross motivate each other without physically have to be in the same place.
In most periods of intense innovation, the innovation itself takes place in so-called clusters, where there is a critical mass of the talented and passionate individuals driving the creation and development of new technology.
This pattern has existed for hundreds of years. Consider the following (incomplete list):
In each of these periods, outsiders managed to start entire industries, often becoming household names and rich in the process. The barriers to entry were initially low and, as time went by, the rich and powerful would naturally attempt to raise them to preserve their comfortable status quo. Generally, this led to a period of stagnation and then another bout of innovation would occur, often in different place and involving different technology.
What's different is that now, with the Internet, being in the same places physically isn't a necessary condition for the formation of a cluster.
In observing the development of personal computers and the introduction to electronic communications that led to the (widespread) Internet you might want to consider the steps that led to where we are now. They are not listed in any particular order, but rather to show that we have had stages of evolution prior to today's Internet that enabled Pro-Ams:
Ham radio
Bulletin Board Systems
Usenet news groups
Desktop publishing
Wide spread availability of e-mail
Browsers and static web pages
Blogs
Each of these steps allow communication to occur and in its way helped the like-minded talented amateurs find their 'cluster'.
Like the song says: It's all just history repeating ..just with a new twist.
P.S. I'd also like to point out the use of rap music to bolster the argument is false. As pointed out in some of the other comments, Big Business has controlled popular music since before the 80's and has largely stifled or co-opted all innovation since then. Not by choice, rather through greed and by attempting to reduce risk. There is some Pro-Am innovation in music, but because of Big Business' control of the existing distribution channels, it has yet to reach any mainstream audience. Perhaps the Internet will change this.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
True, the first amateur satellite was launched 4 years after Sputnik. If I look at HAM-operators or amateur astronomers, even at linux, the most striking to me is the good connections between the the amateurs and the professionals. In astronomy, amateurs help observing variable stars for example. Amateur HAMS have been able to launch their satellites, and are even represented aboard the ISS (ARISS).
What do amateurs have that professionals have not? Time. They have the freedom to peer at a star night after night when professionals would have to buy valuable observation time.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey