Response to Clay Shirky Reading

What I think Clay Shirky means by “ mass amateurization” is the reality that mass web materials are produced by amateurs rather than professionals. According to Clay Shirky, the media now is controlled by professionals less and less. Being able to own a computer means already having had the right to do anything with the website like a professional does. And every user is not necessarily a professional (Shirky 59).

Because professionals have deep confidence in their years of experience, their response to new materials on the web is usually delayed. Clay Shirky calls this “self-definition (59).” Plus free publication, opportunities are made to those internet new nerds who prefer to create materials on the web on their own. These website such as Ebay and Craigslist (as exemplified by the article) are organized, easy, fast, and offering humongous choices and information. People who are eager to get information about cheap goods or job openings love to go to these places.

To illustrate Shirky’s argument, an example from my personal experience will be something said by my humanity professor Alan Hausman. He mentioned in his lecture that Universities preferred hire adjunct faculties because this hiring plan saved universities’ budget a lot. By doing so, professors focused more on their publications, and classroom activities would also be enhanced with teaching intellectuals rather than professionals. These teaching intellectuals also came from prestigious universities and they decided to go with part-time teaching was simply because they loved doing it and they were also professionals in other fields besides teaching.

I have seen that students engaged better in adjunct faculties’ classes rather than in some professors’ classes. I think my example illustrates Shirky’s argument because nowadays, more and more teaching professionals are welcomed to teach students in university just like the way computer new nerds are encouraged to create more convenient websites. In order to teach, instructors don’t have to be professional because everybody can teach just like everyone can use computers to create something on the website. And in fact, as a student, I enjoy instructor’s class because the instructors I had were always easygoing, political, and most importantly, generous.

Shirky argues that the outcome of this mass amateurization is that publication on the web will go from, like he wrote, “why publish this” to “why not?.” In other words, everything will be made to the web regardless whether the publisher is professional or not as long as the information is correct and helpful. I feel like the future of the media professional will still be credited because no matter how many things will be out there, there will always have the best, and the better.