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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."
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. In league with Pro-Am music distribution made possible by Napster and Kazaa, it has turned the entire record industry on its head.
;)
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.
Likewise, according to one estimate, 90% of the content in The Sims is created by a Pro-Am sector of The Sims ' playing community, a distributed, self-organizing group whose players are constantly training one another and innovating.
I suppose you could say that's why it is successful. I honestly believe that Quake was so very successful because people could play it the way they wanted to but I still think that the original game had a lot to do with it. If the base gameplay isn't all that great why would people be interested in building on that? I give this one 50/100.
Some professionals will find that unsettling; they will seek to defend their monopolies. The more enlightened will understand that the landscape is changing. Knowledge is widely distributed, not controlled in a few ivory towers. The most powerful organizations will enable professionals and amateurs to combine distributed know-how to solve complex problems.
More importantly the corporations find this unsettling and they have the backing to make it financially impossible for the "amateurs" to compete.
Pro-Am activity will continue to expand. Longer healthy life spans will allow people in their forties and fifties to start taking up Pro-Am activities as second careers. Rising participation in education will give people skills to pursue those activities. New media and technology enable Pro-Ams to organize.
Perhaps it has to do more with intelligent people understanding that they don't appreciate what's going on in the coporate world and they realize that they can at least do a little bit to start change in motion. I am not saying that they will get very far before the corporations do what they can to make the "amateurs" lives miserable but at least it gets the ball rolling.
Pro-Ams could fuel mass participation in formal politics and in social entrepreneurship.
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.
Plus, if amateurs were so great the flood of high quality home-made porno would be a ton better than what Vivid puts out. Personally, I'd rather watch the oversized men fuck women with over-sized Nip/Tuck'd boobs and airbrushed looking bodies than watching a fat, hairy, man fuck some underaged looking dark-circle eyed skank on the floor of a Super8 hotel room. That's me though
From the blurb:
Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades.
Corporations, their money, and their slaves will continue to reshape society via their direct control over multiple media outlets (solidified TV/news, radio, Internet) not the public. Grass-roots campaigns have always existed on the fringe and while their causes are noble the masses love to be sheep while thinking they aren't.
It just goes to show that while money can motivate people, passion for the work is a better motivator.
42
For me the difficult part is this - how do you define "professional" and "amateur"? Do you have to be an MCSE to be considered a computing professional? Do you simply have to be paid to do something to be considered a "professional"?
...where does this guy pull this crap? A few isolated events and he's predicting a world-changing trend? Geeze...
Blar.
I realize that many fields are easily accessible to amateurs, yet others remain obviously out of reach. Compare this to selling lemonade on the street corner.
In many fields there is independent innovation. In electronics, for instance, people have been home-brewing radios, amplifiers, computers, etc.. for seemingly forever.
Hoewever, it is technologically and physically impossible to build a cyclotron in your back yard. (Though if memory serves me properly, people have tried to build nuclear reactors from smoke alarm materials in the past).
As always there is a limit to what independents can do by themselves, but that limit is always expanding with newly available tech.
- Strydre -
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.
The article says that in the past a lot of amatuers where displaced by people who had the right bits of paper to say they could do it. Today a lot the amatuers actually have those bits of paper, for example how many Linux programmers have computer science degrees or even some lower level computing qualification.
Jon Katz? Is that you in there??
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
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.
Plus, if amateurs were so great the flood of high quality home-made porno would be a ton better than what Vivid puts out. Personally, I'd rather watch the oversized men fuck women with over-sized Nip/Tuck'd boobs and airbrushed looking bodies than watching a fat, hairy, man fuck some underaged looking dark-circle eyed skank on the floor of a Super8 hotel room. That's me though
I've wondered about this, too.
I mean, if I had the access to people willing to act in an amatuer porn movie, the first thing I'd do is hop over to asstr.org (NSFW, duh), dig out some plot outlines from the stories there, and at least get a half decent plotline.
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?
But of course, amateurs do at times spawn some totally unfeasible and fairy-tale like ideas.
Until some major type of revolution happens, the two will co-exist... assuming the small-fry want to keep their independance.
Take homestarrunner.com, my favorite example. They have turned down offers for tv shows and the like, simply because they want full control. I havnt seen any major corp go after them for, well, anything!
no
That amateurs can contribute is, in large part, due to the steady price deflation of equipment, especially equipment based on semiconductors. Declines in the cost of a near-studio quality audio rig, software engineering workstation, or a good quality CCD astrophotography camera make these tools accessible. Low cost chips that enable the networking of the amateurs (remember when 2400 baud dial-up was charged by the minute?) so they can work together.
Thank You Gordon Moore!
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Many people, myself included, participate in processes outside of their normal career function at the "amateur" level but at the "professional" standards level as a release from what they do as a normal profession. There are sometimes more rewards to this function of operation than what money can bring and that is the case for me.
At least not any more amatuer then Windows developers. There are plenty of people that develope applications for windows AND linux in their spare time.
But characterizing Linux developers as amatures is deceptive.
There are quite a few that do it for free, but for the vast majority they actually do get paid for the work that they do. One way or another.
Of course people like the kernel developers get snapped up to go work for big companies, and Linus is a millionare...
Think about it. Say you have a large company that depends on a free database app for your core. Like, say, MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Now if your working with MS for MS SQL you have tech support, if something goes wrong you talk to person after person as your problem gets escalated. Eventually, if you pay enough, you may actually have a very knowlegable MS person come out and do hands on help with you. However if you hire a Linux hacker, you have part of the team that does the actual developement on the software that you use working for you. Just a phone call away and he is probably almost personal freinds with the rest of the team and can contact other developers for you.
Not only for problems, but for functionality.
Stuff like that is why many do get paid.
But there are plenty that don't get paid for their work, directly....
Depends on what exactly you mean by "Pro". Many people devote their life to hacking, lots like Olympic athlets devote their time to being amature althets.
Not to say that Linux developers are the cream of the crop, nessicarially. They range the whole gammat from the weekend warrior, to the 15 year old kid that sits on the computer all day, to the professional highly skilled and specialist hacker working on breakthru stuff.
What I think is more of the "amature" revolution, is more about the regular guy standing up and getting noticed for their contributions for the first time.
People tend to think that it's all big business, or government research or university studies that get progress done. That's wrong. 75% of business is small business in the US,and I'd bet that 90% of everything new in the US comes from individuals persuing their dreams.
Artists, programmers, athletes, businessmen. Working on their own for their dreams.
Linux is just one of many examples of this happening.
I don't think this is something new. Think about punk music. I think it was a reaction to professionalim.
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 dont see the difference between rap stars and more traditional music. I give this one 0/100.
I was just thinking about this yesterday, when I didn't recognize 1 of the top 5 songs in the country. A radio show was listing them and playing clips, and I knew a couple of the names, but the songs didn't ring a bell. I thought they were all terrible, and I happen to like nearly all kinds of music including rap.
But here is my take on rap - it is in its "disco era". Think about it - Rock and Roll had its roots in the 50s. The 60s were rebellion, and what some consider to be the heart of rock music. The 70s started to slide, we then got Disco. The 80s was an attempt to rebound from that, and alternative music was born.
Rap has its roots in the early 80s. I would call the late 80s/early 90s the "60s" of rap. It really showed that it wasn't going away and made a mark on the world. But I think that we are now in the Disco age of rap, where it is all just posing and people trying to cash in. For the most part, the art and creativity is out the window. I just wonder what the "80s" of rap will bring.
But you cannot discount rap any longer. It truly comes from the grassroots and I think fits the intent of this article. Now the STATE of rap is questionable, but I don't think you can question its legitimacy and power.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"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
"Amatuers" have been displacing "Pros" forever. Whenever someone does something good, other people will come along and make it better, its not bad but its not something new to our generation.
50 years ago the FEC railroad took on the entire US.
The Florida East Coast has demonstrated how much you can do if you allow yourself not to be constrained by the way things have been done. You see all kinds of things done unconventionally on the FEC, at all levels-in the mechanical department, in operations, in the yards. One reason for this is that they brought in 'inexperienced' people instead of embracing the institutionalized verities that were there before them. Conventional wisdom went out the window, where it so often belongs." -FEC president W. L. Thornton
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
The submitter appears to have misspelled 'infects'.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
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
<sigh> and then there is Slashdot...
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
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.
But you cannot discount rap any longer. It truly comes from the grassroots and I think fits the intent of this article. Now the STATE of rap is questionable, but I don't think you can question its legitimacy and power.
I don't discount the "power" that rap holds in the music world. What I do discount is that it is still a rebellion against traditional music. They are just a different genre. They certainly aren't fighting "The Man".
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.
After reading that article, the question arises: What exactly is the difference between a "professional" and an "amateur?"
In my view, there is none. Both groups are comprised of people devoted to their crafts, with the knowledge and passion to succeed. It may be that professionals are more likely to have learned their crafts under the tutelage of a master craftsman or through some sort of schooling, while an amateur is more likely to have learned his trade "on his own" but in most cases, there is a large crossover. Many professionals learned their trade themselves without much tutelage and many amateurs actually have some formal training in their field.
Rather than say it's a professional vs. amateur situation, I'd be more likely to term it as a for-a-living/on-your-spare-time type of thing, because oftentime, being labeled an amateur means that you somehow don't know as much as a professional, but that is often wrong. It's more that they are all professionals, but some do it just for a paycheck or recognition, some do it just because they love it, but (hopefully) most do it for both.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
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
I think the conclusions the author comes to are a bit far fetched, but their premise may be accurate. While I'm sure it's true that amateurs are making an impact and performing to "professional" standard, I think the term "professional" is used a bit loosely. There's nothing professional about the lackluster UI slapped on every distro of Linux.
Don't get me wrong, though. That gripe aside, I think what amateurs offer a professional industry is insight and thought that is outside the box. Many professionals in IT, for example, have horse-blinders on. They can't see anything but Microsoft.
But this is nothing new, folks. This has happened throughout history. Almost all great inventors and thinkers have come from a rebellious non-traditional background. There is good reason for this. Their ideas and throughts are not so strictly bound by the instruction they would have received going through normal channels. I'm not advocating we all forget our professional training, but I think we can learn from those who offer "revolutionary" ideas-- not be threatened by them.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
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've always thought amateur porn was WAY better than the professional stuff!
So you're saying that corporate stuctures somehow ruin productivity, stifle innovation and creativity, and turn the skills you once loved into the job you dread from the first moment you wake up in the morning? It's news to me but OK, if you say so...
You know, there's a web site that addresses this spcific fetish...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
First to fall away is control of the flow of ideas. That flow has been bottlenecked by the recentralization of control of mass media in the 20th century leading to a new form of theocracy.
The events following this release of theocratic control over thought occur with a great deal of interrelationship including all manner of "amateur":
Liberalism in its original form from the Reformation and Enlightenment, meant human experimentation (e.g.: "laboratory of the States") but experimentation requires experimental controls. Therefore the prime cause for concern was not that there be agreement between parties but that disagreeing parties find ways to separate from one another to form experimental groups, allowing control groups to preserve older ways. The Age of Exploration was therefore consequent to the Enlightenment.
In the present instance we can take a not too emotional issue such as cloning as a probable "heresy" over which such issues are arising. (There are other, far more motional issues such as homosexual marriage, racial separatism, pedophillia, infanticide, etc. that we can address similarly.) There are attempts in the UN to ban cloning globally under protocols similar to bans on nuclear weaponry. Like most other social experiments people are conducting or wish to conduct, the various entities are proposing that they have world-wide jurisdiction. The conflict isn't over the technologies but over the social experiments allowed or disallowed.
This is a legitimate concern as the globe becomes smaller due to transport and communications technologies. Preemptive controls will increasingly impose on all aspects of life for security's sake. Liberty will dissipate just as it has been with the increase of all forms of centralized control. Soon there will be no more experiments in social forms save those dictated by the sort of individuals attracted to the centers of power, hence the only legacy of humanity will be the destruction of the planet.
The solution is to make the globe bigger and leave earth to the true control groups.
Humanity must find ways of dispersing life to lifeless environments, there to take up residence and leave the earth to the true conservatives -- perhaps limited to hunting and gathering with stone-age technology. Anything else would continue the destruction of vital control groups, not just hunter-gatherers but entire species such as great apes, while depriving humanity of the liberty to conduct its experiments.
The real question of legitimate use of central power isn't over whether to allow this or that experiment but whether the central power is doing everything in its power to disperse life.
By this criterion there is not a single legitimate central point of power in the world, but the worst offenders of all are those nations of European diaspora who are destroying their pioneering heritage with supposed "liberal" policies that dictate universal open borders, "diversity" via EEOC regulations down to the granularity of small mom and pop businesses, by subjecting such an enormous proportion of a family's income political redistribution that all are forced to focus their energies on politics rather than pioneering. All of these things are dictating the social experiments that are politically correct for those pioneering populations and are endangering not just those populations, but life itself as technological civilization is bottled up in an increasingly dangerous pressure-cooker.
Seastead this.
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
You forgot to mention the blogosphere. Blogs dramatically lower the cost of entry into journalism. This has led many professionals and a bunch of arm chair quarterbacks to contribute the media cycle. In a nation that prides freedom of press, freedom of speech, and fairness, this is a good thing.
Go Gusties
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
link?
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
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.
- People like insipid Gestalt psychology explanations.
- People like to feel like they are in the "know" about things.
- People will always try to organize random occurrences into coherent theories so they don't have to remember quite as many things as seperate entities.
hey, i just came up with a social revelation to write down in pop-psychology texts now too, didn't I?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.
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
The only difference between pros and amateurs is the amount of time they spend on something and the price of their tools. Telescopes are becoming commodities just like computers. The internet allows people to collaborate and check out the same object and keep up to date on the latest developments.
It doesn't matter much if your being paid, it's how much time and work you put into what your doing and how much it costs to have the proper tools to help you out.
Astronomy and Programming now have very low barriers to entry and are easy to collaborate. It just broadeds the base of those fields. To get the the top you still need super computers or things like the Keck Observatory that are very hard to come by - for now.
Good link, but small correction needed...
Christians _are_ sheep, just God's sheep.
About astronomy...
I am sorry but with a dobson, you can take picture of the moon and a few planets, holding your digital camera, but that's all... to take pictures of DSO (deep space object), you need a very stable equatorial mount and automatic tracking motors, to allow e.g. 10 minutes CCD exposure. (Or a heavy fork mount and a field "de-rotationner")
But it's true that now this is open to a lot of people, a > 10" SCT and a good CCD will cost more than 10000$, but hardcore amateurs can afford that, and share information and pictures on the net.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I think most libertarian minded people would agree that artificial barriers to entry into segments in society are a BadThing (eg like the guilds of old). The idea that amateurs would be excluded from science, music, medicine, or any field just because they don't belong to a group goes against the grain of modern free society. So I agree with the author in spirit.
That said, however, I disagree with the author on most points because the article assumes that such artificial barriers exist across most of society. IMHO, for the most part, they do not. In the case of science and medicine -- these are *very* hard and critical professions -- the barriers to entering these professions are not artificial; they are nessecary. I for one don't want a doctor-on-the-weekends treatmenting me. Likewise, I don't think most people can train themselves to research and develope nano-technology. I'm not saying that most people can't go into such fields if they choose, it just requires a life-long commitment. Nor am I implying that one needs to pay huge $$$ to pursue such a career -- many of the state funded universities offer the same opportunies as the ivy leage schools.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
I'd like to welcome you to the 21st century ;)
Get an iMac and a MiniDV camera. Capturing involves plugging in the firewire cable. Then you cut it together in iMovie (which anyone can do) then you burn it to DVD in iDVD or export it to a quicktime movie.
I haven't used Microsoft's movie program, but it can't be that much harder.
Disco didn't start in the late 70's.
It went mainstream (and crap) in the late 70's.
No the Bee Gee's aren't disco...
Disco was black gay urban music - just like house.
Rap doesn't have it's roots in the early 80's.
Kool Herc was playing block parties in the 70's.
and some would say rap started earlier - "Jive talking" etc etc....
Acid House saves Souls
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.
You're probably right, if only because eventually rap artists will run out of other music to sample.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
The greatest detective ever, Sherlock Holmes, was an amateur...
I tend to agree with the many posted comments which judge the Fast Company article a bit overblown. There is enough to be gained even from the failures of the amateurs and nobody dies if their collaborations are stiffled by the interference of for-profit operations. ONE good effect of all the open source ferment has been to teach a lesson to the biotech industry. We are all hurt by the huge delays that patent litigation introduces into the process of biotech drug and therapy commercialization. The day before the Fast Company article and with a more fact-based report, the current issue of Nature had an article on "Open Source Biology about how biotechnologists who are willing to share their tool discoveries partly for the synergistic benefit that will have on the collective advancement of research and largely at frustration over the mire of patent litigation that gums up biotech research programs. [NPG charges for access to their content] The effort is spearheaded by Biological Inovation for Open Society and with the support of of the World Intellectual Property Organization are ushering in a new paradigm for science research.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
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.
While the word amateur is indeed of French origin, the verb meaning "to love" is aimer. Both come from the Latin amare, but that does not make amare a French word.
And concerning delittare: That is neither French nor Latin but Italian, the Latin root is delectare. But, indeed, delittante stems from the present participle of delittare.
This is exactly what microsoft wants to stop. In the software business, at least.
That is why it is focusing on becoming a monopoly by gaining antitrust immunity and patenting everything that crosses it's path.
This is why it is collaborating with other companies and forming a cartel of sorts with others "damaged" by competition from Linux and other such upstarts.
History has shown that the vast majority of innovation comes from the work of "amateurs".
When it is left to corporations to innovate, innovation usually becomes mired in corporate bureaucracy or is killed off as "unprofitable".
They are very serious and determined in this. And they hope no one will notice.
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
The words "Amateur" and "Revolution" bring another large industry to mind...
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Until the middle of the last century, brilliant ameteurs had always made a critical contribution to science and technology. In fact, Before the middle of the 19th century, nearly all scientific discovery was made by men whose primary "job" was outside of science.
It was only when the nature of scientific discovery, exceeded the grasp of most common men (requiring may years of esoteric study or incredibly expensive aparatus), that professional scientists forced the ameteurs to virtually disappear.
The advent of cheap manufacture, cheap and plentiful advanced digital devices, and powerful information processing on a desk top, made it possible for curious ameteur to once again participate on dozens of levels of science, that were closed to public access only a decade ago.
I'm not certain whether home brewed nanotech, might be a blessing or a curse, but these are indeed interesting times.
Genda