Synopses & Reviews
Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show.
In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement.
Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our "cut-and-paste" online culture in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors.
In today's self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented.
The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions.
Offering concrete solutions on how we can rein in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, The Cult Of The Amateur is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.
Review
"[A] shrewdly argued jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political gatekeepers and replace experts with the 'wisdom of the crowd.'" Michiko Kautani, New York Times
Review
"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." Library Journal
Review
"Keen's arguments are both scary and convincing, and he writes clearly and with verve." Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review
"[T]he blogger in her proverbial pajamas, or the twitchy nerd with his battered acoustic guitar, may well end up carrying the cultural torch. Who's to say? In any case, amateur is hardly the dirty word Keen makes it out to be, and his reflexive obeisance to people in charge cripples his polemic." Los Angeles Times
Synopsis
Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns in THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR–our newspaper, magazine, music, and movie industries–are being supplanted by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Our newspapers’ advertising revenue is being drained by free classified ads on sites like craigslist; television networks are under attack from commercial-free TiVo’s; file-sharing and iPods are devastating the multibillion-dollar music business, and may soon undermine our movie industry; and Google’s print-scanning technologies jeopardize the profitability of conventional publishing. In a “cut-and-paste” online culture where intellectual property is freely swapped, stolen or “aggregated,” royalty income is lost from the pockets of our artists, journalists, and creators.
Keen argues that the new digital revolution, dubbed Web 2.0, is threatening our culture as well. In a world where anyone with an opinion, however, ill-informed, can create a blog or a podcast, or an entry on a reference site like Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur, between author and audience become blurred. Perhaps the greatest casualty in a world where wisdom of the expert is drowned out by the noise of the amateur, and anonymous bloggers can derail a presidential campaign--as happened with the swift boat incident in 2004--is truth itself.
A clarion call about the frightening consequences of the Web 2.0, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR concludes with concrete solutions for how we can counter the havoc we are unleashing on our economy and society.
About the Author
ANDREW KEEN is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose writings on culture, media, and technology have appeared in The Weekly Standard, Fast Company, The San Francisco Chronicle, Listener, and Jazziz. As the Founder, President and CEO of Audiocafe.com, he has been featured in Esquire, Industry Standard, and many other magazines and newspapers. He is the host of the acclaimed Internet show AfterTV and frequently appears on radio and television. He lives in Berkeley, California.