Here’s Dave N.’s video review of Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values:
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Dave, this is excellent! You get the tone of the review just right, and your visuals are all well-chosen (omg, the monkeys!).
It sounds like you had a lot of controversial ideas to engage with while reading; there’s never any question about what Keen thinks, huh? Web 2.0 = “ignorance + egoism + bad taste + mob rule… on steroids.” Wow. Yeah, I definitely disagree. I’m troubled by a lot of Keen’s claims and agree that they sound pretty traditional and paternalistic.
If you ask me, the “ranks of cultural gate-keepers” have created a lot of the social problems our society has encountered (sexism, segregation — every cask system ever known), and I think his claim that Wikipedia is turning “scholarship and expertise upside-down” is unfounded, since students and scholars are not (supposed to be) citing Wikipedia–they still go to JSTOR etc. for their citations. “Collective intelligence” is only one kind of intelligence out there. Plus, exponentially more people are likely to consult Wikipedia to get information than a traditional encyclopedia, and even if only 90% of the info on Wikipedia is more-or-less “correct,” that still equals more people knowing more, right?
For those of us who think capitalism is inherently flawed, Keen’s claim that Web 2.0 is ruining our economy falls completely flat. Jobs are just changing and becoming more high-tech. The Internet is breaking down a lot of monopolies held by corporations and media moguls. Of course, it’s also creating some new ones, like in the case of Google (they’re still pushing corporate truth — just different truth), though I tend to have zero sympathy for the suits, especially after the bail-out. What if all media (food, shelter, culture!) were free? Oh, the potential of socialism (please don’t start a socialism tangent here, though — Prof. Krause probably wouldn’t find that cool)…
I do agree, though, with the importance of keeping personal information safe online and the scary consequences when that information gets leaked. People do have something of a “self-broadcasting obsession” nowadays, so we need to be savvy in our online activity. Regarding internet porn and gambling, etc.: the Internet is just perpetuating vices that were already there. Taking away the Internet or instating massive censorship laws will not make those vices go away — just underground.
Keen sounds nostalgic for a time that’s definitely never coming back. He can be curmudgeonly all he wants, but the only thing that’s going to banish Web 2.0 is Web 3.0.
Bravo, Dave!
Thank you for the kind words, Carrie. He certainly come off as curmudgeonly at times! I think what he says about industries failing from the Web 2.0 is accurate, but it doesn’t put the blame in the right place. He’s blaming Web 2.0 instead of blaming the industries for their unwillingness to develop new profit models that fit with the current times (although, I think some are starting to come around). And, to give him some credit, he does address this to a certain extent in his “Solutions” chapter. He talks about how the music industry continues to put out CD’s that cost $15 when you can go on itunes and buy the songs for $.99 or the entire album for $10. And, he puts the blame on the music industry for not cutting costs and bringing the price of their products down. But, he spends almost the entire book attacking itunes, netflix, craigslist, bloggers etc. (sometimes collectively, sometimes by name) and spends about a paragraph blaming the industries themselves.
And, as far as the porn and gambling goes, I completely agree. Adolescents and adults are intrigued by vices. It’s simply human nature. Trying to sensor or stigmatize it only makes it more inviting (IMO). I play online poker and would like to see the restrictions loosened in the U.S. I don’t think that because some irresponsible teenager steals his parents credit card or opens one of his/her own and racks up $100,000 in debt, it should be restricted for responsible adults. The problem is not in the access, it’s in the lack of common sense and responsible parenting. If a kid gambles away his college fund online, that’s his fault… not the gaming site’s.
And if we try to pretend that the interent has somehow created an obsession with porn… we’re just kidding ourselves. And, this is a completely separate issue from the sexist, violent and demeaning images often found in porn (again, IMO). If you want to work towards making the representations of women in pornography less violent, sexist etc. that’s one thing. But if you simply want to censor it and restrict it’s accessibility, again, I think you’re fighting the wrong battle.
Agreed. Agreed. Agreed!
I kind of think Keen has a point when he talks about monkeys leading the show. I think Juhasz is a part of ths argument as well (she’s the one who made the YouTube video that attcked YouTube). However, I’m not sure arguments like these are entirely productive. I don’t think there ever was a time when the truly enlightened had complete control of the situation. Plato’s Republic speaks to this issue. In the Republic Plato criticizes the Athenian government and suggests a model he thinks would be more apt for running the city. Keen seems to be doing something along the same lines.
I think you (and Keen) are right to a certain point. I think that Keen’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t rationalize his argument by making your point or giving the other side of the issue any semblence of equal time in the discussion. Does Web 2.0 allow the monkeys to have a bigger voice? Yes. Does it make it more difficult to distinguish between amateurs and scholars? Yes. But is this an entirely bad thing? No. Neither side is an absolute. And, not taking a more moderate approach implies that there was this “magical” time when our cultural gatekeepers kept us safe and the information available was always reliable. If I had to guess, I think Keen does this for the same reasons that Michael Moore, Bill Maher, Bill O’Riely, and Glenn Beck do it… because it’s easier, more high profile, and more profitable to be a provocateur than it is to be a moderate. If his book was called, “Cult of the Amateur: How user-generated media is both good and bad” it probably wouldn’t even be published. But if you’re an extremist, your voice can be heard.
While I fully support people having a voice and the Internet providing a medium for everyone to publish, there is something to be said regarding the lack of quality for what’s out there…I wouldn’t mind if there was less junk on the Internet to sort through!
I feel you, Andrea. My only issue would then be, who gets to decide what’s junk and what’s of value. In the end, a lot of it comes down to taste. I too would love to avoid having to sort through so much junk in order to get to what I want, but someone else might think that what I’m looking for is junk and might want to get rid of it too. To use Keen’s metaphor, I think that if we don’t want to live locked-up in a zoo, we have to accept the fact that the monkeys are going to run around with us (if that makes sense).
Nice job, Dave. It sounds like it was a little difficult to truly accept some of his ideas. His concept that the internet or web 2.0 is ruining our economy, well, that’s just a little hard for me to swallow. If the record companies are losing employees because people can download I-tunes cheaper and easier, and if newspapers are going broke because people are able to get their news online, then there must be job creation in some other venue–at least in making microchips and batteries, if nothing else.
While I agree with the concept of trying to remain safe online, and while I do believe that there are way too many people out there in cyberworld that give out way too much private and personal information, I believe that keeping kids safe from information they should not be privy to is the responsibility of the parents.
It does sound like he is harking back to the Good Ole Days–perhaps to the “Leave it to Beaver” era—when mom and dad and all the neighbors knew where the kids were, but that time has passed and we have to move on…whether Keen is ready or not.
Wow what a great job Dave. You nailed it. It was a very objective point of view that Keen presents and worth of examination. My arguement goes with this for English teachers to step up to the plate and teach these internet tools so that we don’t have the monkeys leading the monkeys. This book spurs me on to do m;y job and not take a back seat to where kids are learning and spending their time. You brought out some good points about the big corporations and how they are affecting the common consumer’s way of thinking. We talk about this in class when you see something posted from .com. This was a great presentation and you provided much meat to chew on.
Your tone is perfect. Your pace is perfect. You pointed out Keen’s controversy with misinformation and values of the amateurs. And then you also point out your own controversy with Keen’s responses in a very respectful manner.
Sounds like this book is about how bad technolgoy is and what we need to do to avoid it. It seems like another version of the scare tatics that so many others have tried to use. I find it interesting that he used a whole book to tell use the internet was bad. I mean there is bad out there but that is not all there is so why does he need to just focus on taht?
I will say that it is more of a specific attack on Web 2.0, as opposed to ALL technology. But, he definately does a poor job of balancing his argument by looking at any positives that have come out of it. He admits that his book would not have been possible without things like email, but like I said before in my response to Carrie, he spends 95% of the book tearing down the monkeys and 5% admitting to the positives. But, I think he spends so much time focusing on the negatives because he wasn’t particularly interested in presenting a balanced view of Web 2.0, he just wanted to make a provocative argument. And, like I said in my review, I think the first half of the book is at least somewhat more rational when he critiques the cultural and economic aspects of his argument, but definately devolves into scare tactics when he tries to tackle the moral issues.
Your book sounds controversial and interesting, and the idea of the monkeys on typewriters was qualified in many ways, but I would definitely want to talk to this guy about it more. The anonymity of being online is a fascinating phenomenon that deserves study, but to say it’s making us all idiots might be a bit much. I think your last comment that he didn’t present a balanced view disqualifies a lot of what he is saying.
Can I just say that guy on steroids was really gross?? lol. Nice job Dave, I think the visuals are a cool touch.