A couple recent articles have described bloggers and blogging in terms of "amateurs" or "amateurization." The Columbia Journalism Review had a piece on blogging titled "The New Amateur Journalists Weigh In;" about the same time, Tom Coates wrote a piece on "(Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything...;" and last year, Clay Shirky wrote a piece on "Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing."
All these articles share a couple assumptions. The personal computer, Internet, and blogging programs and services have lowered the technical and economic barriers that previously had limited the reach of amateurs: your PC can be as good as Paul Krugman's, and your site on Blogger can be as easy to get to as the New York Times. Indeed, there's a tendency to assume that the key distinction between amateurs and professionals has been one of access: professionals have had access to information, to distribution channels, and to audiences, and they've kept that access restricted to themselves (the greedy bastards). Computers and the Internet end that monopoly, opening everything-- music, journalism, photography, political analysis, pornography, even medical diagnosis, though definitely caveat emptor on the last one ("my aunt knew someone who cured her liver disease with a poultice of Noxema, crushed burlap, and kitty litter"). The last two, come to think of it.
Some people have taken umbrage with the term "amateurization," on the grounds that it's pejorative: empowerment is what's going on, they argue. But I think that the term "amateur" is exactly the right one-- if we know who amateurs once were, and what being an amateur meant. Essentially, bloggers are operating a system that Victorian gentleman scientists would have recognized immediately.
The notion that being a "professional" is a good thing, and that professionals know more than amateurs, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the mid-1800s, being a "professional" meant that you were a shill, a hired gun: you dealt in skill or knowledge rather than coal, but you weren't that much higher than the collier. The people who had real credibility were amateurs. Why was that?
Amateurs didn't get paid, and had no direct financial interest in their objects of interest and expertise. They could be trusted because they were disinterested. Because they were often men of leisure, they had the time to pursue their studies intensively.
They could be what historian of science Martin Rudwick called "gentlemanly specialists," deeply and publicly knowledgeable. Those who weren't independently wealthy could still be credible experts, just on narrower topics. A country parson or carpenter could become an expert on local butterflies, or collect fossils from the local cliffs, or know a frighteningly large amount about fancy pigeon breeds. They could be trusted because they had first-hand knowledge.
Amateurs could move faster than professionals. As one contemporary put it, amateurs had "the power of taking up any subject he pleases, pursuing it so long as he believes in the possibility of success." Professional scientists, in contrast, labored under gigantic teaching burdens, or numbing scientific routinesstandards and measurements work, testing, and the like.
Professionals didn't have the opportunity to be entrepreneurial or ambitious; they had work to do. Being a professional didn't give you access to instruments or equipment that wealthy amateurs couldn't also get. In England in 1860, the coolest laboratories and most powerful instruments weren't necessarily at Cambridge or some government laboratory: they were in country houses, or the suburban homes of industrialists and merchants. Likewise, some good oceanographic research was conducted on the yachts of the wealthy, not government vessels. (Charles Darwin basically paid his own way aboard the Beagle, and spent most of that five-year journey off the ship.)
Finally, being an amateur didn't mean being unknown. Amateur astronomers, botanists, archaeologists, etc. were connected together through tight personal correspondence networks, through scientific societies, and through publications. Indeed, the absence of the well-defined "professional" reward of career advancement made amateurs fight harder for credit.
There were various reasons this system came apart, but they don't need to concern us at the moment (they come down to: Thomas Huxley destroyed it). But what strikes me is how much the moral economy of serious blogging seems to be rediscovering the rules of Victorian gentlemanly scientists. Being an "amateur" blogger doesn't mean you're a dilettante: it almost always means that you don't get paid to do this, but you find other ways to define your credibility:
- You talk about what you know best.
- You work quickly, and stay relevant.
- You experiment.
- You link to other people's blogs. If you're smart, you recognize the critical role that communication-- with your readers, with your fellow amateurs-- plays in defining your status and visibility.
- You have your turf but you also see yourself as part of a larger enterprise, and behave accordingly.
Any Victorian scientist could figure out the rules in a heartbeat.
Update: See also this followup.
Recent Comments