Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Huffpost?

I'm sorry, but your post is buried beneath the likes of Deirdre Imus's compelling commentary, and the revelation that Britney Spear's mag photos are airbrushed.

Unless you can get arrested for public intoxication and/or spouting racial epithets (preferably both), your Q factor is lacking.

Heck, even Bill Gates has a mug shot.

You say that "Andrew Keen's book, The Cult of the Amateur, is a media heat-seeking missile", but the only people talking about Keen's book is his supposed opponents such as yourself.

Keen's interviews have made his book, in my eyes, unworthy to read. It's clear it's a case of trolling. Huge generalizations that are easy to knock down. Really David, he's not worth your time.

Which is unfortunate really. Sine David Shenk's Data Smog, there have been no decent discussions of the good - and the bad - of what we are creating out here - based upon a well read book.

That's been far too long.

Data Smog, btw, sits on my bookshelf next to Small Pieces Loosely Joined and Dan Gillmor's We The Media. I find myself constantly recommending all three in related discussions. All three have aged well and are still as relevant today as when they came out.

(I need to get around to reading your latest :))

Bill K, I put it where I could.

Karl, Keen is getting lots of msm attention, from the NYT to the BBC to NPR to The Colbert Report. So, I thought it worthwhile for once to nail down what he's saying and why it's wrong.

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David,

If Keen's book is so wrong and if the msm is so messed up, why bother? I found his book very interesting. I also read your book and thought it was kind of interesting, but more like a love poem about meta data. I also think much of what you have to say promotes "us/them," "in-group/out-group" thinking in terms of the changes going on on the web. It strikes me as strange that the web, which is primarily a creation of scientists, engineers and other great thinkers and innovators is now being lead by marketers and PR spinners. (I know you seem like a nice guy, but I would include your book and its agenda in the latter category of web 2.0 hype.)

Keen is getting lots of msm attention, from the NYT to the BBC to NPR to The Colbert Report. So, I thought it worthwhile for once to nail down what he's saying and why it's wrong.

I read your HuffPost piece, noted that Andrew left no comments, hopped over to his blog where there was absolutley no mention I could find referring to your piece ... but did uncover Andrew's link (which I interpreted as mocking, to a degree) to a debate on the Guardian's "Comment Is Free" section between him and Emily Bell of the Guardian. Emily does a good and conscientious job, whereas Andrew (in my opinion) does not progress through the debate with much professional regard for Emily's carefully considered responses to his challenges. Additionally, there's a thread of interesting comments that pull apart the key elements of that debate.

I have more or less followed his trajectory through the mainstream media, and the serious, earnest, honest and professional debates and rebuttals of his core premise by a number of smart people.

I am under-impressed that he does not take himself or his worthy interlocutors seriously enough to acknowledge your sincere effort to uncover the merits of the case he puts forward. IMO his case gets thinner as he gains more profile.

This may not work for everyone as additional rebuttal to Andrew Keen's main argument .. but sometime today I remembered that Clive James, an arguably well-known cultural critic, has taken to the online world in a pretty big way. I wonder what Keen would have to say in a discussion with James.

This, from the intro to clivejames.com ...

"This website began as an airborne library in which I planned to preserve my written work. The airborne library lifted towards orbit when I realised that it could carry audio and video material as well. Orbit was achieved when I finally got wise to the possibility of expanding the increasingly elaborate vehicle's cargo hold so as to take in the work of other people. Somewhere between a space station and a free university campus, the machine is now embarked on its true voyage, dedicated to the premise that values can be stable and permanent, even when they are packed into a dot in the middle of nowhere, where nothing weighs anything and all the signals move at the speed of light. The squares at the top left of the screen lead to the website's separate departments, and every department leads to shelves, galleries and studios in a building made of corridors whose walls are made of doors. Nobody who builds a thing like this should be suspected of suffering from self-effacement, but I should say at the outset, and before you press the button to gain entry, that the day is already gone when I thought this invention belonged to me."

Once more into the breach ...

Delightful little story comparing the Gawker blog's reporting on Michael Vick with MSNBC's reporting of the same incident / issue.

Proof positive for Keen that those MSNBCer's are real pros. I will never trust Gawker again ;-)

Say No to Keen’s Corporatisation of the Internet
Andrew Keen wants to over-regulate the internet.
He is an out-dated, uninformed person, promoting the established “order of things”, to the exclusion of the young and open-minded.
Keen is scared that his way of life, one of an elite class of unquestioned journalists and others who are “in” with the conventional distribution channels (newspapers, publishers, etc.), is coming to an end.

Andrew Keen’s book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy espouses over-regulation of the internet to prevent “amateurs” (ie ordinary people) on sites like YouTube, internet blogs, etc. from destroying culture, society, and anything else he can think of. He wants the institutionalisation of a system of “gatekeepers”, who would be arbiters of the internet and prevent amateurs (ie anyone who is not of the professional elite that Keen aspires to) from access to it. This, he proclaims, will prevent this mythical destruction of everything from occurring.

1. Keen’s title “Cult of the Amateur” - referring to websites that allow users to post their own videos, comments, articles, etc. - is really saying that anyone who isn’t in the “in” already (newspaper journalists with syndicated columns, famous film directors, etc.) is a rank amateur. So much for promoting new talent. These sites are where the next generation of talent will get its start.

2. “Keen claims that all these sites offering user-generated content are undermining our creative and informative industries.” This is again saying that anyone who isn’t already in syndication (etc.) is (a) a dumb-dumb, (b) creating “Jackass”-like sludge, and (c) that people (in the case of videos) will watch these short offerings to the exclusion of much higher-output movies/TV shows etc., and so there will be none of the latter left, or none with any quality. Are people really going to stop watching ER/The Simpsons/any other popular show because of home-made (albeit sometimes very high quality) internet movies?

3. “Newspaper readerships are falling while anyone…can create a blog”, says Keen. This is implying that it is the fault of the bloggers that the newspapers are becoming irrelevant to modern people, and that the newspapers are owed a living by the public. (Support your national newspaper!)

4. Keen claims that “blogs that profess to be newsworthy tend to deal in ill-informed opinion, gossip and conjecture. They are not held to the same legal standards as the newspapers.” This assumes that journalists know absolutely everything and so their opinions are perfect (while in actuality their very biases are driving people away from the regular newspapers), that gossip should not be printed (If the information is true, who has the right to say it should not be printed? And who defines gossip? Isn’t this why we have a free country, so people can make up their own minds?), and that journalists never conjecture (they often do conjecture – which is what Keen is doing by saying these sites will “undermine our creative and informative industries.”) And who decides what is newsworthy? Is this the right of an editor to say “noone will hear about this person or this issue, because I am so well-informed, and so superior to all plebeians out there”?

As to the assertation that “[blogs] are not held to the same legal standards as the newspapers”, this statement is patiently untrue. The writer of a blog can be sued for libel just as readily as a newspaper journalist.

5. Keen says “Wikipedia…[is] complied by amateurs, [so] it will never be as reliable as a traditional encyclopaedia such as Britannica [which is] compiled by experts, professionals [etc.].” Wikipedia covers many topics not covered by the Britannica, often of more relevance to people than the old (and severely limited) “classical view” of knowledge espoused by the Britannica. Moreover, Keen is saying that noone who adds to the Wikipedia is an expert – what of all the unsung experts in their fields who contribute to it? What about all the fields of knowledge so new, diverse and cutting-edge that the university and traditional institutions have yet to develop, let alone name a degree, in them?
And finally, some of the Britannica’s articles are piece-meal, fragmentary, misleading, outdated (and not updated) or poorly written. So much for Keen’s statement that “experts, professionals, intellectuals and Nobel Prize winners, [are] writing reliable, interesting [articles in the Britannica, while the] Wikipedia…is the reverse.”

6. “The other great problem with the cult of amateurism [which Keen himself could be easily inserted into, as he’s not a journalist or professional author, yet here he is writing a book – so therefore he must be a rank amateur too], is that it generates little revenue…A whole generation…has grown up with the internet considers it a right to have pretty much anything they like online – free.” In this age of spiralling prices, restrictive user-agreements, a trend of crushing copyright “you can’t play this anywhere without getting an expensive licence” restrictions, it is not surprising that people react by expecting knowledge to be free to all – not just to those with a limitless credit card and the foolhardiness to put its number out on the internet, vulnerable to being stolen by the growing ranks of hackers. Even a personal security expert recently had his credit-card number stolen within minutes of placing an online order.
By saying that people must pay, pay, pay for knowledge on the internet, Keen is really saying that the internet should be controlled by the corporations – ie those best suited to charging people for everything. We already have a sample of this on the internet – the newspapers’ own websites, who entice you with the promise of their articles, but demand you pay if you want to read more than a summary. In my time as a student, this effectively blocked me from accessing their resources; however, I widely used the free resources available on the internet – mainly sites put up by “amateurs” and free corporate sites.
Now consider, for example, a resident of a third world country who has managed to afford access to the internet. If they had to pay to see any of the content on the internet, they that would be effectively barred from the internet. At the usual article cost at the newspapers’ websites, a citizen of one of the poorer countries of the world could weekly buy access to two and a half articles – leaving nothing over for food, general living, or anything else. Long live free internet sites!

7. “Keen has been accused of elitism.” This is true – he is a snob and an elitist, considering himself and a small clique of people like him as the only people who are allowed to have an opinion, think for themselves or be heard by others. Everyone else must follow them, like adherents in a cult. And they must pay to hear them.

Say no to Keen’s over-regulation and corporatisation of the internet.

To continue:

News Flash: Andrew Keen Hates People Using the Internet
He Wants it for the Elite Only

Currently, the internet is the last free outlet for anyone to be able to be heard who is not already in a position of power (such as is held by an established journalist, filmmaker or so forth). Other, traditional outlets are already sealed off by institutional gatekeepers, preventing new talent from entering whenever possible, and this is the main reason for the decline in the state of culture in general. Newspaper articles are increasingly biased and unrepresentative, many movies are poorly made with arty pretensions (and so on), as real talent is being largely blocked by the gatekeepers. And Andrew Keen wants to put up more gatekeepers to block new talent from being heard on the internet!

Andrew Keen’s book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy espouses over-regulation of the internet to prevent “amateurs” (ie ordinary people) on sites like YouTube, internet blogs, etc. from destroying culture, society, and anything else he can think of. He wants the institutionalisation of a system of “gatekeepers”, who would be arbiters of the internet and prevent amateurs (ie anyone who is not of the professional elite that Keen aspires to) from access to it. This, he proclaims, will prevent this mythical destruction of everything from occurring.

With the current, unregulated internet, Sue Cato, spin doctor and principal of Cato Counsel, says that “somebody who’s never had a voice before suddenly has one, and it’s an equal voice.”

This is democracy at work on the internet.

Writer/blogger Anthony Lowenstein adds: “A lot of people feel empowered and clearly the internet has challenged the arrogance of many mainstream journalists who think that when they speak people should automatically listen. There’s no question it’s been democratised – the question is whether the positives outweigh the negatives [and] they definitely do.”
Running his own website, open for comments from the same “rank amateurs” that Keen rages against, Lowenstein says of his contributors, “they’re not [uninformed hillbillies]. There’s a lot of quality stuff out there.”

“[Keen] compares bloggers to a million monkeys at a million typewriters,” summarises a review of his book. Keen is in complete opposition, then, to the whole fabric of western culture, which has always espoused the value of the amateur artesian – the “renaissance man” (person) who could paint, draw, dance, etc. with some proficiency, while not being considered an expert at it. From this “talent pool” of talented amateurs then come the masters of their crafts. Keen would rather those already “in” stay in, and those outside of the already-successful stay permanently out – and unheard. Most of those now considered the great writers, composers, painters, etc., began far outside of the circle of the successful elite. Keen would presumably like to exclude these people – killing the very culture he claims he is trying to protect.

Keen would, of course, argue that his mythical editors/gatekeepers would distinguish talent from “amateurs” with unerring accuracy. Interestingly, the “gatekeepers” of the entire art world, particularly in painting, have proved throughout history to be the biggest obstacles to every new development. Their conservatism and general stodginess hampered development at every turn.

For example, the Impressionist painters (now considered ground-breaking) were kept out by the institutional “gatekeepers” of the art world, those experts and professional elite who Keen wants to ingratiate himself with by his protection of their exclusive positions. The Impressionists eventually had to hold their own exhibitions, outside the usual distribution channels, in order to show their work at all.

In all fields, seldom did the “gatekeepers” spot new talent and admit it; always they guarded the gates most tightly against the artists with the talent. These artists had to waste many years of their lives battling the gatekeepers rather than producing art. Keen’s gatekeepers would be no different, blocking talent at every turn.
In fact, the world has become more closed to new talent, primarily in terms of channels of distribution. If you write a novel, and the publishers won’t print it (as has happened to many authors now considered greats – even in the last few years), what do you do with it? Even if you can afford to print it yourself, how do you distribute it? The bookshops will seldom stock these books, and direct advertisements are expensive and generally ineffective. The internet provides the ideal way to distribute the book – whether as a glorified “mail order catalogue” for people to hear about it and order a copy, or as a complete book available online. And since it can be provided almost free online (subject to the minimal cost of maintaining a website), it can be offered for free, getting your work out to the widest possible audience. Keen wants to block this channel from all but the elite, those who already are “in” with the publishers, distributors, etc. and have no pressing need for the services of the internet.

Keen claims that newspapers, record companies, movie studios, publishers, etc. are on the verge of extinction due to the “amateurs” being allowed the freedom to show their work online. The general argument – that a new technology is destroying culture/society/other-please specify - is not new. In the 1980s, when video recorders were new, it was thought that the new “audio visual media” would replace the teachers, making them obsolete overnight, to the panic of teachers, who held meetings against it. (The VCR is in turn being replaced by the DVD, and I still don’t see VCRs fronting classrooms.) The same was thought (at around the same time) about computers, when they were new. Computers now have developed to extents that noone would ever have imagined or hypothesised back in those days, and none of the gloomy prophesies have come true. Likewise, when radio was first introduced in the early 1900s, there were complaints that the new, wildly popular “wireless” was destroying culture, civilised society, etc. Similar arguments were made about the printing press when it was first invented. Keen’s gloomy prophesies and absolute conjecture are following the pattern of those (now forgotten) who projected doom for culture, society and everything else they could think of, at the advent of each new technological advance.

Keen rages against copyright theft. He would probably argue that online piracy of movies/music/books is causing their current decline in their sales, and will inevitably result in the ruin of the companies that sell them. The argument is not new either. When people bored of disco music and sales fell, record companies blamed the new “cassette recorders” (whereby people would copy the music illegally) for this decline. Only very quietly did they later admit the real reason.
Also notice that while music sales fell at the end of the disco era, they recovered sufficiently afterwards for it to be “business as usual” (once the record companies had caught up with public taste again) for more than a decade, before the current temporary fall in sales and rise of gloomy predictions.

To continue the case of the music industry, it is interesting to note that many new artists are now gaining popularity online, some then progressing to a record contract. The internet is an ideal way for them to be heard by the general public before this elusive contract arrives. Cutting the internet off to them, as they are not “professionals”, would stymie new talent – which is what Keen really wants.

Keen cleverly sidesteps responsibility for the gaping holes in his arguments and their inherent lack of logic, flippantly stating that his book is a “polemic, primarily designed to start the conversation”.

Keen states that “noone pays for content any more” and that movies, books, etc. will resultantly become a “publicity tool, another form of promotional giveaway”. The logic of this accusation is unclear, and probably nonexistent. It seems to stem from Keen’s mistaken idea that the periodical fad for companies to commission short-films-as-advertisements will replace the Hollywood blockbuster, the arty independent film, the foreign film or anything else. There are movies made by professionals and experts that are little more than advertisement for toy ranges and car brands; this isn’t the fault of the internet, enthusiastic amateurs, or anything else. In fact, these amateurs can often do better than the professionals – take the internet’s “Phantom Edit” of Star Wars – The Phantom Menace. It tightened the film by cutting away many of the annoying Jar-Jar Binks tripping-over-and-having-accidents scenes. Remember that these unnecessary scenes were scripted and filmed by professionals and experts, and none of them or their gatekeepers saw the sequences for what they were. So much for amateurs dragging culture down.

Aslan Ritchie, Australia

________________________________

Andrew Keen is a snob. He insists no voice for the amateurs, no voice for the ordinary people, no voice for Wikipedians. He looks like the whiff of money, and smells like control. He wants to restrict, edit, control, censor, deny access to the “monkeys" on their blogs.

Andrew Keen says today's internet Web 2.0 is Killing our Culture and Assaulting our Economy.
Culture is more adaptable than the cultural commentators. It is culture’s ability to absorb the new, the unusual, the innovative, that makes it a force that draws attention, admiration and respect.

With every new technology, "culturalists" scream that culture will be killed. This was the cry against the printing press, the telephone, motion pictures, radio, television and now the internet.
Yet every new technology emboldens and empowers culture further.

Culture is inherently adaptable. When Andy Warhol turned soup cans into art, cultural pundits declared that the end of painting was close. Warhol was destroying art/culture. Yet art/culture absorbed Warhol and continued as strong as ever. Many said it was stronger for having room for Warhol's apparent absurdities. Web 2.0, YouTube etc are the modern equivalents of Warhol.

"The Cult of the Amateur". In that phrase Keen presumptuously declares himself superior to centuries of cultural understanding. Since the Renaissance, the ideal of the cultured elite was always the "Cult of the Amateur.” The most respected of the elite were those who, through pure love of culture, knew (and did) something about everything. Through the Renaissance, the Baroque and Rococo eras, the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the cult of the amateur was the ideal of the elite.

When amateurism declined during 1950s and 1960s it was replaced by the cult of the expert, then culture suffered. Only with the recent rise of the amateur, thanks in part to the internet, is culture returning to the heights it enjoyed before expertise ruined it.

Keen scoffs at people who cannot express themselves in writing with the same ease as he does, but he has years and years of paid practice at expressing himself. These writers he now criticises are young and still at school, concerned people with day jobs etc moved to write out of conviction. He can call them rusty, but he should be outlawed for demeaning them. Even those using swearing as a sign of their frustration with their lack of writing skills should not be denied a voice.

Could a gatekeeper be trusted? Jane Austen was "kept out" of the literacy scene by gatekeepers for years. Pride and Prejudice was finally published and became an instant hit. Then all her previous books - sneered at by the gatekeepers - were published. She did not change these stories in any way. They were printed just as the gatekeepers had rejected them. They also became instant hits. Jane Austen is now a canon of English literature. Who remembers the gatekeepers who sneered at her?

Watch out for the outsider Keen abusers today. When one or more become famous authors, they will remember that Keen and the gatekeepers for the narrow minded attitude they showed them.
Keen insists “monkeys” should look to culture of gatekeeper newspapers. Let's look. Letters to the editor can only be so many words, are edited and mostly not accepted. These same gatekeepers state they will not accept unsolicited material.

Let's look at the purity of the gatekeepers. The women's glossy magazines are arranged around the advertisements placed in the issue. Articles are placed around advertisements, not vice versa. Notice Best Buys features, and we all know how they are selected. Everything smells of Keen’s money ethics again The editor of Vogue used it to manufacture a craze for Jimmy Choo shoes made by a company she owns. Yet like Keen, this woman would claim a divine right to censor and suppress material offered to her magazine by people outside her group.

Our final point. Is Keen really going to stand up for what he has written in How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture and Assaulting our Economy. Is Keen going to attack the educational group known as The New London Group, “training children to be incoherent on the internet", a teaching methodology known as the "Multiliteracies Approach". A whole generation of children is literally being trained at taxpayer expense to express themselves incoherently in internet-based communication. They are being discouraged from writing "snail mail" letters, and from learning curtesy and manners. The Rockhampton Central Queensland University is indoctrinating the next generation of teachers with this ideology. So Andrew Keen, I can't wait to hear what you have to say to these untouchable groups.

Friends of Aslan Ritchie, Australia.

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Whoose critecissm tha Nu Lundon Groop?I am traind at CQU Rockhampton with a pee-h-dee in teeching. I reckin tha teechin coors is verie good fer tha brane, and dus not corse brane damij. Tha intanet munkies don't noo wot they is torking abowt. I wreckin Aslan Ritchie en friends is a ratbag fer sayin tha internat is for peepl to uuse. What use full stuf can yu get from tha internat? Nuthin, I reckon. Keen is reely smart. I want an apologee.

Sorry.