Anybody Can Do It

According to Clay Shirky the development and evolution of technology have made it possible for anyone to reach the masses in a way that only professionals could before. For example, in the past we would only receive news from people who went to school for journalism and were trained on how to report the news. But now anyone with an Internet connection can start a blog that can in turn be read by anyone with Internet access. This idea is called mass amateurization.

The amateur now has the ability to reach the same audience as the professional. In theory this is great because we no longer have to go through the same rigorous channels. Being heard is no longer exclusive to those who have had the fortune of graduating from college, knowing the right people or having all the money. Anyone can do it. This isn’t just true in the news world; it’s true everywhere.

In the 1990s being a talented singer didn’t automatically mean that the world would hear your voice. You had to find a producer who would be willing to help you make a demo for a price. Then you had to pass that demo out to anyone in the music industry who would listen. Hopefully someone would like it and you would land a meeting with a record executive. Then if all the stars aligned maybe you might get to sign a contract. But even after being signed it could still take years for your music to hit the radio waves and if enough listeners requested your song maybe your label would decide to shoot a video…. All of that has changed. Nowadays, anyone with or without talent can record their own music in an amateur home studio and sell it on iTunes. They can shoot their own video on a digital camera, edit it on final cut and post it on You Tube.

The negative side of this is that the quality may not be the same. Of course there are some cases where the amateur is just as good if not better than the professional but the majority of them are not. An amateur is called an amateur for a reason, as is the professional. Can we really compare the self made “Soulja Boy” to the accomplished “Jay-Z”?


We no longer depend on media conglomerates to tell us what to listen to or what to care about. The power is shifting from being in the hands of a few (professionals) to being in the hands of many (amateurs). In Shirke’s opinion this will lead to the obsoleteness of professionals: “If everyone can do something, it is no longer rare enough to pay for, even if it is vital”. This may sound extreme but we need to ask ourselves how will media professionals make a living if there are amateurs offering an equivalent product for a cheaper price or for free?