The Cult of the Amateur
The Cult of the Amateur

Author: Andrew Keen

Publisher: Currency

Published: 2008-08-12

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0385520816

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Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement. Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors. In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented. The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions. Offering concrete solutions on how we can reign in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.

Amateur Armies
Amateur Armies

Author: Stephen M. Cullen

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2020-11-23

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1526734443

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A history of volunteer armies spanning from the French Revolutionary Wars and the War of 1812 to pre-1914 Ireland and the Bay of Pigs. Amateur Armies examines the military and social history of volunteer armies around the western world from the failed French invasion of South Wales in 1797 to the disastrous anti-Communist invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in 1961. It brings together some fascinating military actions across more than a century and a half of history and explores the social and political context in the countries involved. Stephen Cullen’s absorbing and original book is the first general survey of the role of amateur armies during the period. Included are chapters on a series of wars in which militias played critical parts. In each case, their actions and effectiveness are described as is the background from which they came, and the social and political circumstances in which they operated. This pioneering study offers a valuable insight into each of the amateur armies covered and opens up an important and hitherto neglected aspect of military history.

The Amateur Army (Classic Reprint)
The Amateur Army (Classic Reprint)

Author: Patrick Macgill

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2018-02-07

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780267984848

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Excerpt from The Amateur Army A year ago had no special yearning towards military life, but who joined the army after war was declared. At Chelsea I found myself a unit of the zud London Irish Battalion, afterwards I was drilled into shape at the White City and training was concluded at St. Albans, where I was drafted into the 151: Battalion. In my spare time I wrote several articles dealing with the life of the soldier from the stage of raw rooky to that of finished fighter. These I now publish in book form, and trust that they may interest men who have joined the colours or who intend to take up the profession of arms and become members of the great brotherhood of fighters. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Amateur Soldiers, Global Wars
Amateur Soldiers, Global Wars

Author: Michael C. Fowler

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2005-09-30

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0313068933

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Transnational politics, modern communications, and access to the tools of warfare have combined to give political movements the ability to wage global war to promote their own agendas, a development that has changed the face of both politics and warfare. Fowler examines current aspects of conducting war, including mobilization, funding, training, fighting, and intelligence to demonstrate how they are accessible to anyone and are well-suited to waging insurgency efforts in many places around the world. Such efforts force governments to deal with unforeseen enemies who violently advance their agendas in a quest for increased power and authority. Because global insurgents, such as al Qaeda, build more direct connections between politics and the use of force, confronting them requires solutions that emphasize politics as much as the use of force. National governments must unite to seek cooperative solutions to issues that affect them. The implications of the adoption of such strategies by groups with varied agendas will undoubtedly change foreign policy planning for decades to come.

The Amateur Army
The Amateur Army

Author: Patrick MacGill

Publisher:

Published: 2008-12-01

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 9781437872712

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

All for the Regiment
All for the Regiment

Author: Gerald J. Prokopowicz

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2014-03-24

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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Despite its important role in the early years of the Civil War, the Army of the Ohio remains one of the least studied of all Union commands. With All for the Regiment, Gerald Prokopowicz deftly fills this surprising gap. He offers an engaging history of the army from its formation in 1861 to its costly triumph at Shiloh and its failure at Perryville in 1862. Prokopowicz shows how the amateur soldiers who formed the Army of the Ohio organized themselves into individual regiments of remarkable strength and cohesion. Successive commanders Robert Anderson, William T. Sherman, and Don Carlos Buell all failed to integrate those regiments into an effective organization, however. The result was a decentralized and elastic army that was easily disrupted and difficult to command--but also nearly impossible to destroy in combat. Exploring the army's behavior at minor engagements such as Rowlett's Station and Logan's Cross Roads, as well as major battles such as Shiloh and Perryville, Prokopowicz reveals how its regiment-oriented culture prevented the army from experiencing decisive results--either complete victory or catastrophic defeat--on the battlefield. Regimental solidarity was at once the Army of the Ohio's greatest strength, he argues, and its most dangerous vulnerability.