Andrew Keen has released a book: The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture.
Keen had an article in the Standard last year that described his views on Web 2.0. In democratizing the ability to publish, Keen argues that the internet has become a tool to extend narcissistic ‘self-actualization’ to a global level.
It is technology that enables anyone with a computer to become an author, a film director, or a musician. This Web 2.0 dream is Socrates’s nightmare: technology that arms every citizen with the means to be an opinionated artist or writer.
The Standard article continues:
So what, exactly, is the Web 2.0 movement? As an ideology, it is based upon a series of ethical assumptions about media, culture, and technology. It worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer. It suggests that everyone–even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us–can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves. Web 2.0 “empowers” our creativity, it “democratizes” media, it “levels the playing field” between experts and amateurs. The enemy of Web 2.0 is “elitist” traditional media.
Keen compares this to Marxism and goes on to say:
Just as Marx seduced a generation of European idealists with his fantasy of self-realization in a communist utopia, so the Web 2.0 cult of creative self-realization has seduced everyone in Silicon Valley.
It is a contrarian view worth examining and understanding. But take time to read the review by Lawrence Lessig as well. According to Lessig:
Here’s a book — Keen’s — that has passed through all the rigor of modern American publishing, yet which is perhaps as reliable as your average blog post: No doubt interesting, sometimes well written, lots of times ridiculously over the top — but also riddled with errors.
Polarizing views that should make for continued discussion – using the elistist traditional or the proletarian media.
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Andrew Keen, Lawrence Lessig
