Inspired by Lawrence Salberg’s review of Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur, I downloaded the book with this month’s credit on my Audible account. I got an hour into the audio book today, and so far it’s like listening to Rush Limbaugh talk about the “Liberal Agenda”. Which is to say, his diatribes are made up of lots of false assumptions, punctuated with moments of accuracy, smeared in generalizations and couched in a rhetorical argument that only make sense if you believe the aforementioned assumptions.
With that out of the way, I agree with some of the points Andrew Keen makes, just not the conclusions he makes about them. Here are a handful of my initial impressions, stated conversationally as a response to his ideas:
Yes, there are lots of idiots creating lots and lots of stupid content on the web. Thing is, this is not a new phenomenon (stupid content). Only the tools that let them reach out to like minded idiots is new. And there is plenty of vacuous mainstream content, from pop music to the last million dollar sitcom. Have you actually sat through an episode of ‘Two and a Half Men‘? ‘Nuff said.
Yes, wikipedia is not 100% accurate, and never has or will claim to be. Its not a bad starting place for research, but no one thinks it has the final word on any topic - which is exactly what Andrew is asserting. And while he is correct in saying that the ‘experts’ may be outnumbered by amateurs on wikipedia, this doesn’t inherently make the whole site a big mistake - nor does it make expertise go extinct. Given that the established encyclopedias had a very hard time adapting to the digital age (they fought CD Rom versions at first!), it was inevitable a service like wikipedia was bound to arise.
Which brings me to his thoughts on the Long Tail. This is meme I’ve been following since the original article was published in Wired. Andrew Keen describes this theory with such inaccuracy that it makes me think he’s only read the dust jacket, much less understood what that book was about. So when he says something like ‘no one gets rich in the long tail’, its hard to take the rest of his thoughts seriously. No where in Chris Anderson’s book does he assert that long tail producers are guaranteed riches. Indeed, only long tail aggregators are going to make money in the ‘Age of Abundance’. The book took three disparate data sets that when graphed, mapped out to a similar Power Law. It was interesting stuff, and made for a great discussion about the shift of power from Broadcasting to Narrowcasting and the rise of the availability of niche content.
And for all his belly aching about piracy leading to the disappearance of records being released — What?!?! Sales may be down, but the number of total number of releases are on the rise, though most aren’t coming from the Majors, but from the “amateurs” Andrew decries — He failed to notice that the Classical Music he holds so dear is actually seeing sales GROW, not shrink. If you’re dream is to see music coming ‘out of every orifice’ (his words), then I believe the internet has completely succeeded in such a task, even if it didn’t happen on audiocafe.com.
With so many false assertions, I can see why people have a hard time taking Andrew Keen seriously. He was a failed Web 1.0 entrepreneur and seems very bitter about it. Now he’s shaping up to be a failed ‘Big Idea Book’ author in the Web 2.0 era. I agree that the internet has given the tools to capture our attention to everyone, and that not all of it is going to be quality. However, if he didn’t try so hard to throw a big blanket over the whole space and say all of it is crap, I could maybe give him a pass, but he’s going to have a hard time digging himself out of the rhetorical hole he buried himself in first 1/6th of the book. I’m going to plow forward and finish this book, but wanted to do a quick follow up to the comment thread that got started on my original post, if only to bring this topic full circle to its logical conclusion.
Stay tuned.
This is the professional blog of Eric Marden, a veteran web developer, entrepreneur, and inspirational speaker.
If you're new here, please subscribe to my RSS feed. You'll get a blend of tech news, analysis, inspirational essays, and much more. Subscribe today.
Good analysis, matches up nicely with most of what I’ve read about his opinions thus far.
Thanks for writing this. I’m really needing someone to restore my hope in the web, and in particular web 2.0, if there can be any such thing.
You make some interesting points. I’m not terribly sure that the “rest of the world” (i.e. not us web-geeks) has the broad understanding of Wikipedia that we do. I think, as you’ll read along (or have it read to you - ha!), that when he details some of the nonsense and damage at Wikipedia, it makes you wonder if we haven’t (at least a little) lost our way.
I’m trying to remember how I felt at the early point in the book. I think I was still skeptical a bit too. But he just keeps hammering away and by the time I was done, I felt like saying, “Ah, screw it. Let’s just shut the whole thing down. It ain’t workin’.”
I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts after finishing. Maybe you’ll be able to restore my hope. You are right to point out that Keen missed that caveat about classical music.
I would differ in your description of Keen. He’s hardly a failure. He’s an active writer who gets paid a lot more than us to write about all manner of things on the net (I guess a bit like John Dvorak, but younger and British). The fact that his first idea tanked and didn’t become Amazon or Napster doesn’t, in my mind, devalue his opinion. On the contrary, he’s had actual experience building apps with thousand so users and was an O’Reilly insider (and I guess still is). We are, by nature, the outsiders and the critics. His blog is interesting (and also depressing) reading as he continues pointing out examples of the noob patrol running amok at Web 2.0 companies (and of course users).
I think my lasting impression that still is clouding my every post and comment is that I too am as much of the problem. Despite the fact I might “get” something that others don’t, or that I want to “help” people by sharing something (a video, some words of wisdom, a link to a helpful website, etc), that I’m only contributing to the noise, drowning out the real wisdom, and just attempting to shape those around me with my own worldview, no matter how “sane” my view might be when compared to others. I guess what I’m saying, what’s the point of even making THIS comment (from the standpoint that others may read it)? Heavens, in reality, I’d rather them not read you or me, but go read something of value: Moby Dick, the Bible, Shakespeare,… something. Not waste away reading our two cents worth.
Heck right behind me could come an equally valid comment about “Death to Nazi’s” or “Buy Viagra”… ha ha…
Still, while I can’t see myself being non-participatory (it just ain’t my way) in any given setting (a blog, a restaurant gathering, etc.), I would say the impression I’m left with at the end of Andrew’s book is that we all must do better. We have to elevate. He doesn’t say this in so many words, so I’ll probably expand upon this (and some strategies for how to do this) later. I think we’ve let the internet’s penchant for anonymity, snarky comments, poorly documented references, corruption of intellectual property rights, and the inclusion of all facts as equal to other facts have it’s way with us and we’ve slowly begun sliding down the pit toward… what I don’t know. Anarchy? Stupidity?
I say “we” are doing this, and certainly some of are doing this in far greater ways than others (Numa numa! ha!). And certainly, as you point out, this problem isn’t germane to the internet, as even ten minutes of watching American Idol will prove - and I’m not just referring to the contestants, but that we would consider those three fools “judges”, or the audience as “rational”. What about morning radio Zoo shows that our culture seems to tolerate? Maybe you or I don’t listen or watch that stuff, but there is a steadily growing percentage of the population that seems to do so - all the while demanding more and more “base” entertainment, while reading less, working less, doing less, and building less.
It’s a class warfare of a different type - and it’s even sucking in those of us who are smart enough to know better. I read one fellow’s blog who in between incredible insights about all manner of business acumen, he puts up reviews of movie trailers. Not movies. Trailers. And writes about as passionately about them as if they were real life events. I’m more than guilty of doing similar stuff. And we wonder why the major media (right or wrong) scoffs at bloggers and thinks they shouldn’t be given the time of day. We respond in knee-jerk fashion to every rumor and opinion. We write poorly. We have our posts “edited” by our readers - not by editors.
I could go on - but it isn’t relevant to what you’re saying. I think the bottom line is that maybe you’re on to something. Some kind of solution? Some of kind compromise between Dunceville and Elitism? I can only hope.
That’s a bit of a tall order, but will certainly try to do my best in restoring your faith. The truth certainly lies somewhere between Andrew’s points and those espoused by the kool-aid drinkers.
It was unfair to point Mr. Keen has a total waste, and it was a bit of sensationalism on my part to tie in the strained use of the ‘Fail’ meme I choose for my title. I don’t really apologize for it, as it was just written with the tone I generally reserve for rants of this nature. In other words I wrote it in the heat of the moment, capturing the initial outrage at the way he (incorrectly) portrayed a number of things I actually knew something about. In a ironic way, it served as self-referential commentary on the use of misrepresentation as a debate method. I did to him what he did to the projects I defended, and of course neither was actually true. They were merely truthy.
The real problem is that we are discussing this like engineers - that is we are thinking of this topic in black and white terms. When in fact, we are all elite and we are all dunces, and depending on the subject, the context, and the mood - we can fall on any point on that gradient imaginable. Sure, some of us fall closer to the idiot end of the spectrum more often than not, but that doesn’t mean that its the systems fault for being an expression of the collective experience of its operators. Nor do I believe that there is anything inherent in any of the current tools that bring out the baser sides of our personalities.
Its all about where you pay your attention. What you focus on, is what you’ll get more of. If you’re looking for evidence, you’ll always find it. And that, my friends, is the only thing I really hold against Andrew Keen.