The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture

I have recently read this book and offer a review in my <a href="http://bleongcw.typepad.com/simple_is_the_reason_of_m/200...">blog</a> and contrasted it with Wikinomics, another book that explore the web 2.0 phenomenon from the business perspective.

The central thesis of this book is that the amateurism introduced by blogs (Blogger, Wordpress and Movable Type), videos (YouTube) and wikis (Wikipedia) has eroded our culture towards a dangerous world where the distinction between expert and amateur is being obscured and only the loudest and the extreme dominate in the digital world. Of course, in this book, the author did attempt to tear apart why the wikipedia is not a reliable source of information (given that anyone can edit anything they like) and the economics of the long tail purported by Chris Anderson. I do agree with the author that there is a need for recognized experts' opinion on wikipedia entries instead of allowing an egalitarian approach to specialized information.