RodeWorks

I’ve glanced through Andrew Keen’s new book The Cult of the Amateur twice in bookstores, but haven’t purchase it yet. The sub-title is How today’s Internet is killing our culture, with the basic argument that traditional news outlets, music publishers and other professional content producers are being driven out of business, with a crowd of biased, untrained amateurs to blame. In this interview with Moira Gunn on tech nation he finds great fault with the internet’s anonymous nature, where we never really know who is writing a new item or review, and therefore can’t be sure of its accuracy or lack of bias.

I have a couple of issues with this viewpoint. First, even if all he says is true what are we to do about it? The genie is out of the bottle and there is no stuffing it back in.  It seems to me that record companies have been suffering exactly because they didn’t embrace to change.  Let’s recognize the good and bad about the shift, and use this knowledge to inform our adaptation to the paradigm shift.  To Keen’s defense I haven’t read the book yet, and he may offer ideas for going forward.   And while I do believe that much of what he does say has elements of truth, I don’t agree with his conclusion that our culture is being killed. Sure sources can be anonymous, but most prominent blogger do identify themselves and their viewpoints. If someone steps too far out of line there is someone else there to call them out. And in a “Wisdom of Crowds” type of viewpoint one Amazon review written by a book’s author pretending to be a reader will be outweighed by the other real reviews. In fact some very helpful perspectives on the Cult of the Amateur can be found in the Amazon review for the book — sort of ironic isn’t it.

Despite my objections to his viewpoint I think it is still worth hearing. Take a listen…
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IT Conversations: Andrew Keen

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