The Cult of the Amateur

April 16, 2007
Keen's relentless "polemic" is on target about how a sea of amateur content threatens to swamp the most vital information and how blogs often reinforce one's own views rather than expand horizons. But his jeremiad about the death of "our cultural standards and moral values" heads swiftly downhill. Keen became somewhat notorious for a 2006 Weekly Standard
essay equating Web 2.0 with Marxism; like Karl Marx, he offers a convincing overall critique but runs into trouble with the details. Readers will nod in recognition at Keen's general arguments—sure, the Web is full of "user-generated nonsense"!—but many will frown at his specific examples, which pretty uniformly miss the point. It's simply not a given, as Keen assumes, that Britannica is superior to Wikipedia, or that record-store clerks offer sounder advice than online friends with similar musical tastes, or that YouTube contains only "one or two blogs or songs or videos with real value." And Keen's fears that genuine talent will go unnourished are overstated: writers penned novels before there were publishers and copyright law; bands recorded songs before they had major-label deals. In its last third, the book runs off the rails completely, blaming Web 2.0 for online poker, child pornography, identity theft and betraying "Judeo-Christian ethics."

July 1, 2007
Keen (founder, CEO, Audiocafe.com), a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and accomplished technology writer, has produced an extensive history and critique of the evolution of today's Internet, often called Web 2.0, a new term to acknowledge the Internet's new social uses. He looks at wikis, folksonomies, innovations to facilitate open communication (e.g., blogs), media-sharing sites like YouTube, and such social networking sites as MySpace and FaceBook. Keen does not envision great benefits from these new uses. He asserts that the web is being overrun by amateurs, who are destroying the roles of experts. He also fears the demise of longstanding media and advertising conglomerates, the devastation of the intellectual property rights system, and increasing inability to find quality and trustworthy information online. In the end, argues Keen, user-generated free content is "assaulting our economy, our culture, and our values." Keen takes hard-line stances and repeats points again and again rather than letting readers draw their own conclusions. Nevertheless, this book brings to light controversial Web 2.0 issues and is ultimately a thought-provoking read that should be considered by public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/1/07.]Caroline Geck, Kean Univ., Union, NJ

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