The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy by Andrew Keen
Posted in: Internet Use/New Technologies at 06/06/2007 11:54
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy by Andrew Keen
Andrew Keen's latest book has gained some notoriety. The book is BBC's Newsnight book club's latest addition and is discussed at length, including an extract from chapter 1. Newsnight's Gavin Esler asks "has the internet become a medium of mediocity?" And Newsnight says Keen "expresses his concern for the profligacy of online amateurism, spawned by the digital revolution. This, he feels, has had a destructive impact on our culture, economy and values." There's way too much to reproduce here, but part of the extract republished says "call it the great seduction. The Web 2.0 revolution has peddled the promise of bringing more truth to more people -- more depth of information, more global perspective, more unbiased opinion from dispassionate observers. But this is all a smokescreen. What the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment. The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of a hundred million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves." Join the debate, and while the Newsnight story is still available, watch it!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2007/06/the_cult_of_the_amateur_by_andrew_keen.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm
And for the Newsnight segment, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_6720000/newsid_6725200?redirect=6725211.stm&news=1&nbwm=1&bbwm=1&nbram=1&bbram=1
Also see:
"Amateur" charge infuriates blogosphere (Reuters)
Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter. ..."Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys... are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity," Keen writes in a book published on Tuesday. His views have infuriated bloggers and others, especially in Silicon Valley, who argue he is an elitist intellectual, a conservative pining for a return to old ways, and a writer who cannot keep his facts straight. The villains in Keen's narrative are a "pajama army" of mostly anonymous writers who spread gossip and scandal, "intellectual kleptomaniacs," who search Google to copy others' work and the "digital thieves" of media content in the post-Napster era.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKN0423182220070605
http://ioltechnology.co.za/article_page.php?iSectionId=2891&iArticleId=5016964