Review of Keen’s “Cult of the Amateur”
I wrote a solicited review of The Cult of the Amateur for the magazine New Scientist.
The Blogosphere is up in arms over Andrew Keen’s new book, The Cult of the Amateur. Keen deliberately set out to tweak the mavens of Web 2.0 - and he is succeeding. This is great fun to witness, because said mavens often have all the self-righteousness of revolutionaries, at least when it comes to the virtues of Web 2.0, and are thus eminently tweakable.
Keen decries everything that he imagines to be wrong with the internet - especially the mediocre work of amateurs. Free but substandard content is apparently destroying whole industries, particularly our culture industries. He hates the fact that so much of today’s internet content is collaborative and distributed. The so-called wisdom of crowds is itself an “extraordinary popular delusion”, he says; the best work comes from the individual, professional mind. Anonymity coupled with anarchy leads to myriad abuses, from the corporate gaming of YouTube to “moral disorder”. …
Maybe I’ll post the full text…
UPDATE: done
Please do!
Comment by John Stephenson — July 17, 2007 @ 5:06 am
I did a phone interview with Keen last night that you might be interested in.
http://www.goodwillhinton.com/good_will_hinton_weekly_podcast_andrew_keen
Comment by Will Hinton — July 17, 2007 @ 8:25 am
Interestingly, it appears an employee at my local chain bookstore sabotaged Keen’s book from ever reaching the shelves. Even so, I read Keen’s book a few weeks ago. My thoughts basically agree with the thrust of this review: the flaws in Keen’s arguments are worth overlooking to glean the varied benefits from his core-most message.
Comment by Stephen Ewen — July 18, 2007 @ 1:53 am
Let me add one more thing.
One thing reviewers tend to not account for is that English is Keen’s second language.
While not an excuse, and although he his is clearly highly advanced as it goes, I would argue that this is in part responsible for at least some of the book’s flaws.
Comment by Stephen Ewen — July 18, 2007 @ 2:07 am
Second language? Huh? I thought he was English.
Comment by Larry Sanger — July 18, 2007 @ 2:21 am
I understand Bosnian is his first language, Brit or not.
Comment by Stephen Ewen — July 18, 2007 @ 12:00 pm