I have written about perception before, but this week it really stood out for me. I had a several situations come up that punctuated it in my mind. Perception as an issues came up in both my undergraduate classes and undergraduate classes. I had one student who was upset at the injustice she perceived at work. In her mind she could not see how the nonprofit she worked for could pay what she saw as outrageously high salaries to the managers. Her perception was that they were making well more than double the salaries of the secretaries, and all they did was have meetings and joke around, while the secretaries did all the work. What was worse was they were getting raises while the organization was laying off secretaries.

In cruising through the New York Times today I came across a review for a new book by Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur. Although I have not read the book yet - and I still might, just to better understand his perspective – but if the New Times is to be believed, I find Mr. Keen’s proposal very disturbing. It seems that Keen see the web, and especially web 2.0, as a blight on the man’s cultural development; because, it celebrates the “noble amateur” over the expert. 

It seem to me that Keen would have made an excellent ancient aristocrat – oh lets say a duke in the middle ages, or a plantation owner from early American history, or better yet a member of the biblical Sanhedrin. He would do well in any position that relied highly on positional power – power and authority that was granted and not earned. What Mr. Keen fails to realize is that it is the struggle to be heard, the half baked ideas, and the less than perfect credentials of the ideas origin that forces society grow. Experts and authorities need to be pushed to make themselves heard, to explain why their ideas are the right ones, and to question their own assumptions.