Andrew Keen is (mostly) wrong
by asi
[caricature is taken from "Rock and Roll - The Devil's Diversion" by Bob Larson 1967]
I just finished reading the rather uninsightful yet overly provocative “the cult of the amateur” by Andrew Keen. There have been endless debates around this book (read more here an here) but I’d still like to make an overall point:
“Rock and roll is a part of this plan (Satan’s) to achieve a world-wide moral decay” (On Rock’n'Roll, 1962)
“an evil pure and simple, destructive of social interchange†(On films, 1910)
“MTV is a very destructive force in society primarily because, for many, it plays a surrogate parental role” (On MTV, 1992)
and then, in 2007 Mr Keen says:
“Have we — as empowered conversationalists in the global citizen media community — woken up with the golden slipper of our ugly sister (aka: mainstream media) on our dainty little foot? Or have we — as authors-formerly-know-as-the-audience — woken up as giant cockroaches doomed to eternally stare at our hideous selves in the mirror of Web 2.0?”
“Everything becomes miscellaneous. And miscellany is a euphemism for anarchy”
“Web 2.0′s democratization of information and entertainment is creating a generation of media illiterates. That’s the nightmare”.
“new digital abundance will lead to intellectual poverty”
“Web 2.0 transforms us into monkeys”
Do you see the similarities here? For as long as people have developed new technologies, there has been debate over the purposes, shape, and potential for their use – from books to radio to tv to video games and to the internet. and keen, like the last elitist, standing on guard, gatekeeping our culture and intellect from the abolishing power of the web, advocating traditional media on the basis of epistemology and authority of knowledge.
Treating “the internet” or “web2.0″ as one thing and trying to argue if it’s right or wrong, good or bad is as stupid and useless as treating humanity as good or bad. The web is us. the web is humanity, people, information, knowledge, sex, mass culture, high art, politics, love, hate, bullshit, relationships, truth, lies, communications…..it is everything. the abundance of humanity is the abundance of the web – and within this everything we have to sort out whats good or bad, what we like or dislike, what makes us tick and what repulses us.
The only point I agree with keen is that this massive democratisation and freedom of art, knowledge and creativity of which the web2.0 revolution has brought upon us is a huge challenge. Just like in the ‘real world’ where everyone can say what they want and pretty much do what they want there are some serious downsides and a lot of ‘human dreck’ but would any sensible mind give up on these values or dismiss them as corrupting our culture?
Personally I blame the mistakes of the slow progress of the last thousand years or so on the cult of the professional.
LOL!
good point mate…
A.
It’s nothing more the “new replacing the old” fallacy with a lot of scaremongering woven in between.
We have this new way of doing things. It’s surprisingly good at some things, and opens up some new possibilities. It is not so good at others, and to be honest, some things it does quite poorly.
If only we haven’t thrown everything else out the window…
Wait a minute! We _%$#ucking_ haven’t!
Lucky human civilisation! You can tie back the life-boats
so… like Keen himself said in a recent interview – this book is a speaking-engagement-revenue-generation-vehicle
Next week – TV is the end of radio. Week after next – we all loose the ability to cut stuff due to the invention of the fork.
[...] blessings to the human society and culture are by far greater than the dumbing down of individuals. Just as books and Rock ‘n’ Roll and TV in the past, google and the web do not make us stupid as a [...]