Today on KCRW’s daily radio news roundtable “To The Point,” host Warren Olney did a segment on Andrew Keen’s internet-damning book “Cult of the Amateur,” in which bloggers are described as “enthusiastic monkeys” who try to “steal away our eyeballs.”
The “monkey” part I won’t dispute, but — he’s dead wrong with “eyeballs,” it’s all about the BRRRRAAIAIIINNNNNNSSSS.
Mr. Keen has compared Web 2.0 to the evils of Communism (he slurs Lessig as an “intellectual property communist,” and Steve Jobs is a “cultural Marxist,” LOL). The core premise of Keen’s book seems to be that conversational media is destroying culture, ruining the economy, and destroying the lives of “experts.”
The book’s a lot more fun to read if you replace every instance of “YouTube” or “MySpace” with “rock and roll,” and pretend it’s 50 years ago and you’re watching scared old fogeys rag on Elvis and the Beatles. Or just imagine the whole thing being read aloud by General Jack D. Ripper.
I can’t help but wonder if some of the bitterness in Keen’s rhetoric has to do with the fact that the big dumb web crowds he so eagerly disparages effectively voted down the “content and community” Web 1.0 music dotcom he ran circa 1999-2000. I understand it crashed and burned after 18 months.
Along with Mr. Keen, I was among the guests in today’s episode, as was Larry Sanger (Citizendium) and Clay Shirky, whose insightful essays tearing apart technoskeptics like Keen and Michael Gorman have been blogged here on BoingBoing before.
Olney was a generous host, and as usual, Shirky was the smartest guest in the room — he was a lot of fun to listen to.
And you can listen to the whole episode here: podcast link (iTunes), episode rundown.
Reader comment: Gregory Soo says,
It’s a tad ironic that Keen has little qualifications for cultural criticism, and is thus an amateur at the very discipline of his book deriding amateurs. Maybe the only thing Keen is ‘professional’ at is trolling. And, “natural born filters” is so true.
C.E. Petit says,
Here are my comments from a week ago on Keen; although our reasoning differs, we reach part of the same conclusion concerning Keen.
And I drink only pure rainwater.
Update: Huh, look at that — Kevin Kelly debated Mr. Keen online. In 8 parts, no less! There’s some really interesting stuff in here: Link.