[plug] [link] "Welcome to the Amateur Century" - Financial Times

[Leon Brooks]

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1039523915202

<quote>
For the past two centuries experts have risen to command virtually every 
field: science, medicine, sport, education, parenting, cooking. The 
professionals have pushed aside bumbling amateurs.

Yet in the century to come a new breed of amateur - not lone inventors but 
dedicated, educated, well resourced people, working in networks - will make a 
comeback. The reign of the professionals has passed its peak.

As an example of the trends at work, take astronomy. The discoveries that 
established astronomy as a field of scientific inquiry were made by 
inquisitive amateurs. In the 19th and 20th centuries those discoveries were 
formalised and measured by a new breed of publicly funded professional 
astronomers, working with telescopes well beyond the reach of the amateurs.

These days, as Timothy Ferris points out in Seeing in the Dark, a history of 
modern amateur astronomy, thanks to digital cameras, computers, software and 
broadband communications a committed amateur has access to equipment of a 
sophistication that only a handful of observatories could afford 20 years 
ago. The internet allows amateurs to co-ordinate their activities and 
multiply their power.

There are limits to what amateurs can achieve. They cannot launch probes deep 
into space or theorise new discoveries. It is unlikely that amateurs will 
make significant discoveries in quantum physics, for example. Professionals 
will remain important. Yet astronomy and other fields like it will 
increasingly become "pro-am" activities, in which professionals and amateurs 
will sometimes compete and often complement one another's work.

This trend towards "pro-am" organisation is already affecting many other 
fields of endeavour, especially in societies in which people are more vocal 
and highly educated; they enjoy longer life spans, which means they can spend 
more time as adults learning and exploring; and where cheap, powerful, 
miniaturised technologies enable them to share ideas with others.

As Freeman Dyson, the physicist, pointed out in a recent issue of The New York 
Review, biology may be ripe for the kind of transformation that astronomy has 
gone through. At the moment, tools for genetic engineering are confined to 
laboratories, just as mainframe computers were four decades ago. Thousands of 
plant and animal breeders, farmers and gardeners will excitedly take up 
genetic kits as they become more affordable over the next few years. The same 
trends are well established outside science. Genealogy attracts more users to 
the internet; and a "do-it-yourself" culture is vital to sport.

In software, some of the most impressive innovations in recent years have come 
from the Open Source movement, which creates software, such as the Linux 
operating system, by bringing together networks of committed enthusiasts to 
share their ideas. In politics, traditional political parties have to contend 
with a multitude of non-government organisations and pressure groups that 
have mushroomed over the past decade.

Some professionals will see this gathering invasion force of informed and 
co-ordinated amateurs as a threat to their prestige. The more open and 
thoughtful will recognise that the new amateurs cannot be easily dismissed. 
In future the professionals will have to work with, learn from and sometimes 
compete with amateurs. Clever companies and organisations will know how to 
mobilise the ideas and input of amateur enthusiasts.

Others, with some justification, will point to the risks of unregulated 
amateurism: biological warfare technologies falling into the hands of 
terrorists, for example. Yet those worries should not lead to blanket bans on 
the spread of knowledge out of professional domains and into society. Nor 
should they deflect us from the huge benefits we are set to reap from a 
flowering of amateurism.

As Freeman Dyson puts it: "In the most important of all human 
responsibilities, the raising of children and grandchildren, amateurs do the 
lion's share of the work. In almost all the varied walks of life, amateurs 
have more freedom to experiment and innovate. The fraction of a population 
who are amateurs is a good measure of the freedom of a society."

Thanks to computers, education, communications and a spreading democratic 
culture, the conditions for Dyson's "amateurism index" are improving. In 
times that seem so troubled, the rebirth of amateurism should be one cause 
for optimism.
</quote>

Cheers; Leon