It is odd that they picked up on your use of 'amateur' in this way. I certainly knew what you meant by the term, as I suspect most people who read your article did. If I do something as a 'hobby' often, but don't get paid for it (blogging, photography, collecting stuff, whatever) then I'm an amateur at it - with no judgement applied to if I'm actually any good at it. If I do something often and get paid for it (music, IT-type stuff) then, according to the taxman at least (!), it's a profession (=opposite of an amateur pursuit). Shirley?

→ Posted by: Simon Thornton at September 8, 2003 9:44 AM

Of course the etymology of amateur speaks to doing something "for the love of it," but it's also true that the word carries baggage, connotations of sloppiness or mediocrity.

Then again, how anyone could read your essay as an insult to webloggers is beyond me.

→ Posted by: xian at September 8, 2003 9:46 AM

"Amateur" could well be a veiled insult, but the use of the word in your article is fairly obviously non-pejorative.

However, you do suggest that amateurisation could have negative effects:

"And this will bring an ever-evolving culture of amateurisation into every form of creative production ... Whether or not this shift will result in an explosion of creativity or a debasement of quality remains unclear."

Microdoc seem hesitant to admit that the "empowerement of the masses" could generate dross as well as gold.

→ Posted by: Joe Watson at September 8, 2003 11:20 AM

If we're worried about words having unfortunate connotations, empowerment is hardly going to do; it makes weblogging sound like self-helpery. (Which it can be, just as it can be amateurish, but that's hardly all it is.) That rainbow superhero graphic on the Microdoc article isn't helping, either. Not everyone who sets text to screen wants to be an Empower Ranger.

→ Posted by: Rory at September 8, 2003 11:52 AM

It's kinda interesting. As I read it I had 'both' interpretations flipping randomly through my head trying to puzzle out which one you were going for.

I have to confess to, until the clarification of this post, having come to the pessimistic conclusion.

→ Posted by: Mad William Flint at September 8, 2003 4:33 PM

This is bound to open up a can of worms (and I'm already well behind on the response front for the other score), but so the hell what if blogs are amateur? Let the weak-kneed get their panties in a bunch over the "I'm okay, you're okay" political correctness. They can go home and cry to mommy about pejoratives. Call me crazy, but a guy in his twenties or thirties shouldn't be crying over a bloody nose on the playground. I'm troubled over the idea that people (in this case, Tom) have to defend themselves for being honest about the state of weblogs or, for that matter, the state of the universe as described or chronicled in a weblog. Can't anyone take crticism or half-baked conclusions like a man anymore?

Jesus. I'd hate to be in the Verdun trenches with the Microdoc News folks. If I had to spend our time constantly comforting them, the Germans would mow us down with machine guns before you could say Big Bertha.

If you want to be empowered, then get off your duff, put in the work and do something about it. Just keep in mind that it's a tough universe out there.

→ Posted by: Ed at September 8, 2003 9:09 PM

Amateur is okay. It's amateur astronomers who discover new comets, it's amateur entomologists who discover butterflies thought to be extinct. The 'talented amateur' of the Victorian era is where many of the professionals of today came from. The father of modern surgery, John Hunter, was an amateur whose insatiable curiosity led us to much of modern medicine.

For "amateur" read "generalist", for "professional" read "specialist". We all know that over-specialisation leads to extinction. There's nothing wrong with the gifted amatuer. It's the hopeless amateur, however, that we don't want to be associated with. People who collect labels on apples and oranges and suchlike, the clueless amateur, the boring trainspotter etc. I glory in the amateur, but I draw a line when amateur becomes an excuse for not being good enough.

→ Posted by: Joel Biroco at September 9, 2003 12:44 AM

can't really see how else one would describe your article without using the word amateur.

→ Posted by: kavi at September 9, 2003 2:23 AM

I think it's unfortunate that 'amateur' has acquired such a negative connotation. I know when I hear the word, I think first that it's an insult, and then remember that it doesn't have to be. How much of that is because the 'professionals' needed to explain why people should pay them to do what the amateur would for love?

→ Posted by: bree at September 9, 2003 8:46 AM

The bright side, though, is that the article has generated a response at all. There are tons of "amateur" bloggers out there who could declare an incestuous relationship with Hitler and not get a comment, trackback, or referral.

See what good writing and taking a stance can getcha?

→ Posted by: Joel at September 9, 2003 12:51 PM

Amateurs are people that have the opportunity to simply do what they feel for instead of what will bring them a steady income. I think that's a really good starting point for making something of real value.

→ Posted by: anoxia at September 9, 2003 2:33 PM

Such distinctions between "amateurs" and "professionals" also assumes that being labeled a professional is the Holy Grail of compliments, which is far from the truth. I have worked with scores of professionals who would lend that term a far worse connotation, had they not made a career of hiding in their cubicles and avoiding responsibility.

→ Posted by: Matt at September 9, 2003 2:39 PM

If I remember correctly, Microdoc went out of their way to take a giant dump on AOL journals, which smacked of elitism: "I cannot help but get the sense that AOL Blogging is going to be anything else than emasculated garbage." Very nice, s/he must be suffering from a sense of humour failure -- or bypass -- concerning the 'rank amateur' status of their views, and needs to read a copy of "The Intellectuals and the Masses".

→ Posted by: Gummi at September 9, 2003 7:42 PM

Aside from the thinly veiled flamebait that was the Microdoc article, their response does highlight the different meaning of the word 'amateur' in the UK compared with other English speaking nations (Microdoc is based in Australia).

We Brits almost exclusively describe someone as 'amateur' when they engage in an art, science, study, or sport as a pastime rather than as a profession. Conversely someone is deemed to be 'professional' if they persue said activity as a job.

So the difference between 'amateur' and 'professional' in British English is not one of skill or ability but of employment or finance.

In other English speaking countries (US and Australia included) a rather different distinction is prevalent. A professional is someone who is proficient and an amateur is someone who is not (yet).

Having said all that, it was pretty clear that your article implied amateur as meaning unpaid rather than unproficient.

→ Posted by: Richard Rutter at September 10, 2003 10:47 AM

I think Tom's enthusiasm for blogs is obvious, as is his support for 'amateurisation' meaning everyone can do it. However there's more to this subject than an 'amateur? how dare you!' response. Tom claims that 'amateurisation is everywhere', and I don't think this is as true as it initially appears, and nor is it necessarily a good thing as Tom implies.

Digital empowerment is a substantial cultural trend (Movable Type, Photoshop, Publisher, Avid, Premiere...) but I think its still quite a specialised area. Tom speaks in a generalised way - it is indeed "panoramic" - but is actually thinking of a relatively small number of people. You can't talk about 'empowerment', 'community' etc in such a narrow way when these are important, and WIDER social/political/educational issues. The world is changing? Says who, and by what criteria? And how are blogs part of this when such a small percentage of people have a computer/internet connection/blog? Many people do in the educated new media world, but statistically most people who have a different kind of life don't.

Tom's consistent 'finding the good stuff' theme refers to a select few within a select few. The majority of blogs are not based on "information". Distributed cognition and aggregation are great ideas, but they do not apply to maybe 90% of what's out there - the blogs that Tom neither reads nor links to. Most blogs are socially motivated. Personally, I have concluded that blogs as a whole are not very interesting because I can't possibly be interested in thousands of individual lives that I mostly cannot relate to. It's like having access to personal letters. But their significance derives not from what I think, but from what the families, friends and colleagues think of each other's work. And that's great, just as it's great there are a small number of blogs which are based on or at least interested in "information". But what about the remaining 90%? What can you say about them? I think these parameters need clarifying, so the interests and concerns of a digital elite are not presented as a widespread cultural phenomenon or the defining meaning of what is happening. The value of the blog phenomenon is 'distributed', as are the blogs themselves. And here's a specific point: WHO is comparing blogs to the academic citation model? I only know one person who did/does this: Tom, presumably thinking of his own online venture. I may be wrong. But again I think this needs clarifying, and also evaluating: if most blogs are not information based, then this premise is incorrect. It may apply to a select few, but not the vast majority.

I think a much bigger example of 'amateurisation' is the fashion for Pop Idol This, Become A Celebrity That, and the related so called Reality TV. You too can be a famous person. Is this 'empowering'? Of course not. If it ever does help people it is still a tiny minority in the same way that so called celebrities are a tiny minority. As some kind of social project, it is therefore misleading and exploitative. It appears to empower but maintains the same old infrastructure. You are supposed to identify with the protagonists because they are ordinary, but they are in extra-ordinary circumstances which you and I will never experience.

I don't mean to be either aggressive or rude, but robust: if a spade is a spade, it makes sense to describe it as such. Personally, I think in the media, in politics and even in academia there is too much spin, half-truth and fancy rhetoric that gets us nowhere.

→ Posted by: James at September 10, 2003 1:09 PM

The guy is a total crook anyway.

It's ironic that for someone who is pushing themself as a Google expert, you can find so much dirt on him by searching Google :-)

→ Posted by: Anonymous Coward at September 11, 2003 3:41 AM

The ironic thing about Mr Microdoc's comments is that he (or she - I couldn't find a name on the site - a further irony when the subject is personal publishing) is not an amateur publisher. As he describes on the about the site page, the website is his job - it pays enough for him to live on - it is (at least at the moment) his profession. Kinda funny how he still relates to the little guy putting up a webpage for fun/satisfaction as "us". It's also quite amusing that the material is copyrighted to a limited company. The other interesting thing about his article is his reaction to google removing his site from the google news feed. He doesn't say that google specifically gave his supposed 'amateur' status as a reason - I think simply the fact that it is written and edited by a single person that is the problem - there are no checks and balances, no one to catch mistakes or query facts. Professional or not, reliance on a single source (as it were) can lead to serious errors being broadcast as news (or in a dossier...)

→ Posted by: John at September 15, 2003 12:39 AM

The Titanic was built by professionals. The Ark was built by an amateur.

→ Posted by: Peter at November 30, 2004 12:56 PM