Speaking on painkillers, too much coffee and sans power point presentation Ben Hammersley really aimed at provoking his audience at New Media Days 08.
"Web 2.0 is the longest suicide note in the history of media as such," Hammersley said and then set out to argue for the abolishing of user generated content in traditional media.
"As the generally accepted argument goes: Old media is dying and new media is very successful. Therefore we should stop what we were doing before and convert everything into a Facebook application. So that’s what every media outlet is doing," stated Hammersley.
His point was that the content users create isn't very good and that it can never reach the quality of content written by professional writers.
"Stop moderating the crappy writing of a myriad of users who don't have anything to offer. Looking at user generated content is like taking a trip to the mental hospital to look at all the sick people who think they are Jesus in the vain hope that one of them for once turns out to really be Jesus," Hammersley said comparing web 2.0 to Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital in 18th century London.
If anything Web 3.0 will really be about writers finding themselves and for once concentrating on the art of writing, he noted.
While I do think Hammersley has some interesting points and isn't entirely off track - I also think that he is fundamentally wrong in the sense that web 2.0 and user generated content has never been about good writing. Accusing web 2.0 of bad writing is like accusing a horse of not being a dog. User generated content is about social interaction and relationship. It is not about creating a fine tuned, fact checked reading experience. That is and has always been the task of traditional media. If some of its practitioners have lost focus, I don't think web 2.0 is to blame. In stead blame lack of editorial vision and leadership and perhaps even laziness in tradtional media.
