Mass Amatuerization

In Clay Shirky’s chapter “Everyone is a Media Outlet” he uses the term “mass amateurization” to describe the development of technology and how it has evolved by once being placed on professionals, and how it had slowly been moved on to the common man. Tools that were once so expensive and limited to only professionals are now being sold to everyone allowing accessibility and widespread usage. With this lift, everyone can produce and publish work just as how professionals once did.

According to Shirky “Mass amateurization is a result of the radical spread of expressive capabilities, and the most obvious precedent is the one that gave birth to the modern world: the spread of the printing press five centuries ago” (66). This suggests that anyone can publish work and not just the professionals. It seems that nowadays mass amateurization is occurring in every subject matter, but it can be found most strongly in the media. Shirky gives the very first example of mass amateurization to bloggers, who covered Trent Lott , the senior senator from Mississippi. Shirky goes on to say “Information that might be of interest to the general public may not be published, not because of a conspiracy but because the editors have professional bias that is aligned by the similar tools they use to approach those challenges. The mass amateurization of publishing undoes the limitations inherent in having a small number of traditional press outlets” (65).

Photography is another work where the common man can produce work. Anyone can acquire a camera and publish their work on internet sites such as Flickr, and have millions of people view their work. Youtube is another site that allows either amateur and professional videos.

The media plays a big part in mass amateurization because the internet allows a number of vast opportunities for the common person to learn the tools of the trade. Shirky argues that the outcome of mass amateurization is "because professionals are always concerned with threats to the profession. In most cases, those threats are also threats to society; we do not want to see a relaxing of standards for becoming a surgeon or a pilot. But in some cases the change that threatens the profession benefits society" (69). Through Shirky's statement he contemplates on how the outcome can have both positive and negative effects. He believes that organizations think they have more power than they actually do and that in reality they don't because what happens in society is out of their control. Shirky continues on by saying "There is never going to be a moment when we as society ask ourselves, "Do we want this? Do we want the changes that the new flood of production and access and spread of information is going to bring about?" It has already happened; in many ways the rise of group forming networks is best viewed not as an invention but as an event, a thing that has happened in the world that can't be undone" (73). Through Shirky's statement he argues that what's happened cannot be undone and mass amateurization is a phenomenon that we as society should embrace because it has given people an outlet to produce and show our work.

I feel that in the future the media outlet is going to rely heavily on the viewing of a lot of amateur work because it has given us the power to do so. I also think that because of the number of bloggers producing news that editors from companies try to censor, its going to really give a fight to news companies to cover stories that matter or they'll lose all their customers.

Shirky, Clay. "Everyone Is a Media Outlet." Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing Without Organizations. New York. Penguin. 2008.