The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture

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The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture

2.73 of 5 stars 2.73 · rating details · 627 ratings · 174 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 reign 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.

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Hardcover, 240 pages

Published June 5th 2007 by Currency (first published 2007)

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Sep 29, 2008 oriana rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2008, why-werent-you-better, book-i-hate-you

Let me start by saying that I opened this book with a totally open mind. Seriously! I too think that blogs, MySpace, and YouTube are doing horrible things to our culture in this country, so I though I was going to be the choir this guy was preaching to.

Not so.

And let me say, too, that the reason this is two stars and not one (and actually was almost three) is that it really made me mad, and really made me think, which is no small feat. Plus it got me into several (loud) arguments with my boyfrie...more

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Feb 29, 2008 Lon Harris rated it 2 of 5 stars

Keen gets off to a dazzlingly bad start, misstating the concept of Google search on Page 6.

"The logic of Google's search engine...reflects the "wisdom" of the crowd. The search engine is an aggregation of the ninety million questions we collectively ask Google each day; in other words, it just tells us what we already know."

Is this intentionally dense? I mean, yes, Google uses the experiences others have had in some ways to create your new experience when you enter a search query, but that's har...more

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Sep 24, 2007 Kelly rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2007, society

In a nutshell, the book comes close to making some valid points, but treats them so frivolously and superficially that by the end of the last chapter you feel like you've just spent an hour listening to your great-grandma's best friend Eileen talk about how much her corns are bothering .

Throughout the book, Keen lacks any sense of historical context. You feel like he believes that nothing happened in popular culture prior to 1990. He blames the internet for television's audience fragmentation, f...more In a nutshell, the book comes close to making some valid points, but treats them so frivolously and superficially that by the end of the last chapter you feel like you've just spent an hour listening to your great-grandma's best friend Eileen talk about how much her corns are bothering .

Throughout the book, Keen lacks any sense of historical context. You feel like he believes that nothing happened in popular culture prior to 1990. He blames the internet for television's audience fragmentation, for instance, when in reality that has been a growing problem for networks since the 1980's and the rise of cable. He seems to think that YouTube gave birth to opposition research - but political candidates have been following each other around with video cameras long before the macaca scandal. He complains that now, people can "seek out the information that mirrors back our own biases and opinions and conforms with our distorted versions of reality" - like no one ever did that before. He claims that "[b]efore the Web 2.0, independent media content and paid advertising existed separately, in parallel, and were easily distinguishable from each other." Like product placement in movies. He says "What happens to truth when politicians begin buying channels on YouTube to trash their opponents?" Well, probably the same damn thing that happened when they began buying airtime on television, or ad space in newspapers.

Keen is decidedly pro-establishment. He bemoans the fact that new are stealing time away from television and movies. Right, because TV and movies produce such top-quality entertainment every time. I'm sorry, but is Hamster Dance really that much worse than The War at Home? Is it such a tragedy if people start reading Perez instead of watching Access Hollywood? And I honestly believe that the Salad Fingers series (Google it) has more artistic value than Norbit, Silent Hill, and The Mangler 3: The Mangler Reborn combined.

The "amateurs" and "Web 2.0" that he denounces throughout the book aren't even responsible for his most virulent complaints. Peer-to-peer file sharing, for instance, with its impact on the entertainment industry, has been around much longer that "Web 2.0" and has nothing whatsoever to do with "democratized media." It's merely a technological innovation like the cotton gin.

In short, Keen is a Luddite. Every transitional technology is met with resistance from established technology providers. There's a period of time when people don't really know what to do with the new technology. And eventually the system corrects itself and life goes on. This is why it's called transitional technology. It's absolutely true that the legal system hasn't caught up with the internet and associated technologies - but it will. The entertainment industry will, too. And people will learn that you can't cite Daily Kos or WorldNetDaily in your term papers any more than you can cite the Enquirer. Basically, all he wants to do is "protect the legacy of our mainstream media and two hundred years of copyright protections." Which is fine. But if that's your goal, just say so in the introduction, not your final chapter, and deal with that issue - don't pretend you actually care about the minds and hearts of people when it all comes down to protecting industry.

Ah yes, his last chapter, titled "Solutions." Possibly the most annoying chapter in the whole book. What are Keen's brilliant, expert solutions?
- Adaptation of existing businesses to new technology
- Restructuring of web sites to provide higher quality content
- Adaptation of existing legal principles
- Parents being aware of what their kids are doing.

All of these have been happening, and they started long before this book was published, and Keen adds absolutely nothing original.

Way to anger the librarians!
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Mar 01, 2008 Douglas rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: no one.

Given that Andrew Keen is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, whose writings have appeared have appeared in a number of prestigious publications, I surmise that he is reasonably intelligent and well-informed about technology and culture. It is with great shock and disappointment that I read the book "The Cult of the Amateur."

Keen believes that all these empowered individuals (like you and me) are 1) poisoning civic discourse by blurring the lines between facts, inferences and opinions, 2) destroying...more Given that Andrew Keen is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, whose writings have appeared have appeared in a number of prestigious publications, I surmise that he is reasonably intelligent and well-informed about technology and culture. It is with great shock and disappointment that I read the book "The Cult of the Amateur."

Keen believes that all these empowered individuals (like you and me) are 1) poisoning civic discourse by blurring the lines between facts, inferences and opinions, 2) destroying excellence in culture by cutting, pasting, remixing and mashing up existing culture, and 3) destroying time-honored societal institutions like newspapers, the mainstream media, the recording industry and Hollywood.

You will find many ideas in the course of this book which have been suggested, vigorously debated, and ultimately rejected by the blogosphere, such as "Wikipedia is a stupid, poor man's version of the Encyclopedia Britannica," "anonymous blogs are a grave threat to public discourse," "journalism is a discipline like law or medicine, requiring rigorous training and certification," "blogs and their readers form an echo-chamber, a group of people who only listen to what they want to hear," "John Kerry was unjustly maligned by a small cadre of right-wing bloggers," and on and on. If the material in this book appeared in the form of a blog, it would be vigorously "fisked," examined on a page-by-page basis and ripped to pieces. It is ironic that Keen writes in glowing terms of Robert Fisk, the man from whom the term "fisking" comes, in the course of the book.

About a quarter of this book is an anti-blogosphere screed, with no balancing mention of mainstream media malfeasance, such as the attempt of the producers of 60 Minutes to influence the 2004 Presidential election with fradulent documents, or the leaking of confidential government information by the New York Times. Sometimes it gets personal, when Charles Johnson of little green footballs is referred to as "a rabidly pro-Israel blogger."

There are concerns raised later in the book about privacy, online gambling and online pornography. While I share his concerns about privacy, I reject the idea that its either a recent problem, or a problem with amateurs not bowing to the wisdom of their betters. While I'm in agreement with him that the cultural mainstreaming of gambling and pornography are unwholesome developments, I reject the idea that they have anything to do with the empowered individuals Keen finds so troubling in the first part of the book. It's almost as if he mentions every cultural problem that has something or other to do with the internet, and hoping that you'll associate it with the amateurs mentioned in the first part of the book.

Keen mentions in the introduction that he started to become disenchanted with Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 vision of the empowerment of individuals in September of 2004. And that is the hideous, horrible problem with this book. It is so September 2004. It is full of nostalgic longing for the day when the producers of 60 Minutes could decide who was going to be President, the day where Walter Cronkite could say "And that's the way it is," the day where the New York Times declared what was and wasn't newsworthy. The point of this book was that September 2004 is a better time than now, a point with which I vigorously disagree.

The only redeeming factor is that instead of just whining, he offers some websites at the end of the book that he sees as promising developments, such as Citizendium, Joost and iAmplify. He sees these websites as correcting the excesses of Wikipedia, YouTube and MySpace, respectively. (less)

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Feb 29, 2008 Julia rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Luddites

Shelves: contemporary-culture

I love a good anti-internet polemic as much as the next girl. In fact, I actually thought I'd be the one person in my workplace to secretly love this book as I am part-curmudgeon and just don't get "these kids today" with their truthiness and solipsism. But, man, this book was truly terrible -- poorly researched, free of historical context and alarmist. It's like when the Frankfurt School got their panties in an uproar over that new-fangled radio thingee except Keen doesn't have half the philoso...more I love a good anti-internet polemic as much as the next girl. In fact, I actually thought I'd be the one person in my workplace to secretly love this book as I am part-curmudgeon and just don't get "these kids today" with their truthiness and solipsism. But, man, this book was truly terrible -- poorly researched, free of historical context and alarmist. It's like when the Frankfurt School got their panties in an uproar over that new-fangled radio thingee except Keen doesn't have half the philosophical heft as Adorno.

The text moves from "Wikipedia needs editors" to "I'm bummed Tower closed" to raving about "the children, protect the children" -- insulting the great "monkey" unwashed all the way. His assessment of the internet fails to take into account curation, filtering mechanisms, subscription services (eMusic gets a small nod towards the end) and open source technologies that have allowed NON-amateurs to seize the means of production after having been shut out by mainstream tastemakers for the better part of the Twentieth Century. (As a consultant for The Future of Music Coalition's International Artist Project, I'm thinking particularly of musicians who hail from outside of Keen's eurocentric frame of reference.)

Speaking of Keen's perspective on music and remixing, does remixing Dylan diminish the original, or does it reify its authenticity? I'm not entirely sure. Maybe, Baudrillard could tell us. But, the point is that Keen's arguments aren't complex or original. And, they don't amount to more than, say, a series of blog posts by one of your more evolved monkeys.

I really am all for taking on the detrimental affects of online social networks, advertising and the incessant, flattery-filled "you"-ness of contemporary culture, but pound for pound, I'll take Thomas De Zengotita's Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live It over The Cult of the Amateur any day.

(Ok, one more thing, I know Keen isn't willing to raise those user-generating amateurs above monkey-level, but he's got to grant internet users a little agency. In his book, we're all constantly being duped, unable to filter out the crap or, for God's sake, turn off our bloody computers every now and again... which I'm going to do right now.)(less)

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Jul 21, 2008 Angelo rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: digital-economy

If you tend to get pulled into discussions about the pros and cons of social media, Andrew Keen’s “The cult of the amateur” is a good book to get you all fired up. It is full of holes, plenty of hyperbole, and comes across as an angry dissertation by someone who wanted to get things off his chest in a hurry. But that’s precisely why it’s important to check it out.

These are the kind of arguments someone in the room will bring up when debating whether comments ought to be moderated, or the managem...more If you tend to get pulled into discussions about the pros and cons of social media, Andrew Keen’s “The cult of the amateur” is a good book to get you all fired up. It is full of holes, plenty of hyperbole, and comes across as an angry dissertation by someone who wanted to get things off his chest in a hurry. But that’s precisely why it’s important to check it out.

These are the kind of arguments someone in the room will bring up when debating whether comments ought to be moderated, or the management team should care about comments by the ’stupid public’ in relation to a YouTube video.

Keen is the kind of person who would have dismissed Abraham Zapruder’s film as unreliable and amateurish, just because he was not a real journalist. Keen is very passionate about the morphing or passing away of the old media. Some of what he observes is accurate, about the digital economy, the downside of internet as an economic and communication conduit. The usual suspects are paraded: click fraud, Google bombing, anonymous Youtube videos (like the Penguin attack on Al Gore by a PR firm), online gambling, fake blogs etc.

For every Perez Hilton and Matt Drudge, bottom-up distribution through blogs, podcasts, Flickr and Digg has created discourse about journalism and law, for instance –from the likes of Jeff Jarvis, Lawrence Lessig and Glen Reynolds. He omits mention of how the pajama bloggers he vilifies fact-checked and checkmated Dan Rather. He would be terribly upset that NBC anchor, Brian Williams writes a blog, and that the queen of England released her Christmas day message through the same democratized distribution network that amateurs upload content, YouTube.

But Cult’s true weakness is in mixing up his argument about amateurism, with an argument about all things digital. To suggest that YouTube, Google, iTunes and CraigsList is causing the extinction of newspapers, television and record labels misses the reality about how these older media were structured, and how some of them failed to respond to changing audience behavior and interests. Smart journalists realize that this isn’t the slippery slope, and that they could adapt. A few weeks ago Dan Shearer, senior editor of the Mesa Republic hailed a citizen reporter for being the first responder with information and pictures of a church fire.

“Ignorance meets bad taste meets mob rule” does fit some of the awful content that passes for entertainment and news, but we haven’t said bye bye to the experts and gatekeepers. It’s just that they are different, and operate differently. To me “ignorance meets bad taste meets mob rule” has nothing to do with the democratization of media; it’s what we have put up for years on (sigh) the six-o-clock news on television, long before the digital tsunami hit.

Just for the record (I bet you’ve heard these arguments before) this is the lens through which Keen sees social media:

* Amazon: “chief slayer of the independent book store”
* YouTube: “a large commercial break”
* Google: a “parasite,” and “an electronic mirror of ourselves”
* Pastors who research sermons online are “plagiarists,” Lessig is “misguided,” and the internet is a “moral hazard.

There is hope. The last chapter, Solutions, does offer some ideas as to what could be done to save the world from going to hell in a hand-basket. But I won’t spoil it for you. It’s a book I still believe everyone even mildly involved in media and communications ought to read, after Wikinomics. When looking up Wikinomics on Amazon, it does not come up as “Customers who bought this item also bought,” recommendation. But then the “chief slayer of the independent bookstore” wouldn’t be reliable, would it?
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Jul 24, 2007 Mike rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: folks interested in Web 2.0 and technology

I expected to be upset by this book. I was. This is no more than a poorly reasoned and weekly supported anti-Web 2.0 rant by a failed Internet entrepreneur. His claims that the participatory nature of Web 2.0 will ruin culture because it removes the highly trained cultural gatekeepers (publishers, record and move producers, etc.) from the equation of what we read, watch, listen to, etc. is ludicrous. If these gatekeepers were providing such high quality content the 2.0 revolution wouldn't be an...more

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Aug 31, 2007 Jeremy rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: members of the flat-earth society

This book made me all kinds of cranky. I accept the premise on its face, that the web is chock full of amateurs blathering on about their most mundane thoughts and dreams. I part ways with the author when he claims that our culture and values will be destroyed because of it. By decrying the fate of the major movie studios and record labels, and the precipitous drop in their revenues, it's pretty clear who he's writing this book for. By pretending that the public at large has a relationship of in...more

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Feb 25, 2008 Matthew rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who get inspired when they're pissed off.

It's been a very long time since I've read a book so in opposition to most of my core values regarding creativity and expression. From page one and on almost every page following, I've found things that offend me. This book avoided a no-star rating only because the writer has inspired me to be more committed to my views on independent creative endeavors.

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Oct 28, 2008 Tom rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Internet Junkies

Recommended to Tom by: Barnes & Noble

I went into reading this book having already viewed a Google talk video where the author discussed it and took Q&A. I found that the core tenet of the book, that the "Web 2.0" so-called democratization of all media is a profoundly bad thing that undermines talent and professional skill and does nothing to enrich our lives, is pretty accurate. The promise of the democratization, that an average citizen can publish a blog post, a song or a video that is as valuable to the reader, listener and...more

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Mar 01, 2008 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Based on the title, I thought this was going to be another book about the Bush Administration. But instead of being about the incompetence, hubris, cronyism, and greed that’s running our government and ruining our country, The Cult of The Amateur is about the incompetence, vanity, narcissism, and greed that’s running the Internet and killing our culture.

Overall, Keen’s polemic is a very relevant book and one I wish everyone would read. It’s sure to spark a lot of debate at dinner parties between...more

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Jan 08, 2008 Bob rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: know-your-enemy

Often described as a polemic, "The Cult of the Amateur" is simply a screed against societal and economic change. It is a moralistic bombast against the populist notion of cooperation and collaboration in favor of a single point of reference determined and espoused by an expert. The author pulls out all of the goblins: narcissism, lying, thievery, gambling and pornography; to warn readers that their culture is under siege by know-nothing friends and neighbors bent on self-expression and actualiza...more Often described as a polemic, "The Cult of the Amateur" is simply a screed against societal and economic change. It is a moralistic bombast against the populist notion of cooperation and collaboration in favor of a single point of reference determined and espoused by an expert. The author pulls out all of the goblins: narcissism, lying, thievery, gambling and pornography; to warn readers that their culture is under siege by know-nothing friends and neighbors bent on self-expression and actualization at the cost of a national dialog. To believe the premise, our society will unravel — even our economy is at stake! — if my neighbors and I allow ourselves to chronicle the times we live in without heeding the checks and balances of experts. We are, with each visit to Wikipedia, with each blog post and each download; jeopardizing jobs in traditional publishing, distribution and media. What purports to be a defense of our national character ends up being a defense of the hayday of mass media where three networks and a handful of newspapers made the news and controlled the water-cooler-conversations through a self-chosen circle of "experts." I have found it impossible to separate the words on the page from their outspoken author, Andrew Keen. Lacking direction and focus, Keen leaps from conclusion to conclusion often contradicting himself: as in his mourning the loss of niche knowledge among the staff of Tower Records and lambasting the uncontrolled blogosphere for perpetuating a never ending series of narrow interests. Keen’s academic pedigree shines through each sentence and illuminates his general distrust of the common man. This book is an unconscious paean to media darlings of a by-gone era: the condescending, idealistic academician as talking-head. Yes. Gambling can be dangerous and pornography is not for children. No. The crowd is not imbued with wisdom. Our society is experiencing significant growing pains and experimenting with new technologies and freedoms. Through seven chapters, Keen focuses only on the negative consequences of technological advances and condemns our innate human curiosity and expression as irrevocably bad. In the eighth and final chapter, Keen finally allows that there are benefits and acknowledges that we may yet reign in this beast of Web 2.0 and realize our own folly. He might be right. We may yet welcome experts into our conversations, should they decide to participate rather than instruct. Doing so will strike a balance between narcissistic echoes in the blogosphere and self-referential experts espousing their wisdom. It is a bit of a strain to think how Keen, after seven chapters of self-righteously divisive language, can make that allowance; but the final chapter is a welcomed return to reality and pragmatism. If you must read this book, I highly recommend checking it out from an American library—where royalties are not paid.(less)

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Jul 11, 2007 Jonathan rated it 2 of 5 stars

While Keen does make some interesting points, his constant railing against all aspects of Web 2.0 grows old. We get it. You don't like user-created content, at least when it is created by people other than yourself (more on this later). Keen might be trying to get us to rally to the cause of saving the Internet, but in the end one can't help but wonder if he is just a bitter man who missed the 2.0 boat.

As one can expect from the title of the book, he is not fond of amateurs, stating that profes...more

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Feb 03, 2009 Roger rated it 2 of 5 stars

As someone who thinks there isn't nearly enough skepticism about our current headlong rush into total technological immersion, I expected to sympathize with Keen's points. And I did, to a point. But the subject deserves a better treatment than this.

The book deals with three main points.

First is the philosophy. Here Keen seems to agree with Tom Lehrer's old line: "The reason most folk songs are as atrocious as they undoubtedly are is that they were written by 'the people.'" The digirati, who hold...more As someone who thinks there isn't nearly enough skepticism about our current headlong rush into total technological immersion, I expected to sympathize with Keen's points. And I did, to a point. But the subject deserves a better treatment than this.

The book deals with three main points.

First is the philosophy. Here Keen seems to agree with Tom Lehrer's old line: "The reason most folk songs are as atrocious as they undoubtedly are is that they were written by 'the people.'" The digirati, who hold disproportionate sway over the shaping of our culture, have championed the idea that uncredentialed commonfolk have something to say and that they are worth hearing. Keen disagrees. A quick look at YouTube or a random blog will show he's right 99% of the time. But he ignores cases in which knowledge is too specialized or too time sensitive to be printed in any form, or too rare in traditional media. In those cases, blogs and Wikipedia (also Goodreads) are ideal. Since he doesn't address these situations, he can't even begin to ask the key question: is the din of self-involved, uninformed twaddle emanating from MySpace, Twitter and blogs worth sorting through to find the useful information?

Second are his thoughts on internet gambling and pornography. He's not a fan. But as far as I can tell, these have nothing, specifically, to do with Web 2.0, so I can't figure out why they're in this book.

Third, and most interesting, are the business aspects. Here Keen outlines the frightening and likely scenarios facing our media. As blog readership rises and newspaper readership falls, will we have more and more commentary on less and less actual news? Will a music industry composed of nothing but unpaid amateurs (half of whom are just remixing preexisting works) ever result in another Beatles or Radiohead? Would an unprofitable publishing industry ever have produced a John Updike? (The answers, by the way, are yes, no, and no. Anyone who thinks true geniuses will toil in poverty for love of the art and still produce top-notch work without any kind of educational or editorial structure are fooling themselves.) I think the longheld implicit assumption has been that people will eventually find ways to make money off digital distribution. For television producers and 3-minute pop singers, this may be true (it may be less money, but not so much to threaten the industry). But longform media (in-depth reporting, novels, full-length albums) are in trouble, and THAT really is a serious threat to our culture. Someone ought to write a better book about that.(less)

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May 22, 2013 Nelson Zagalo rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: technology, internet

The book started very well, defending a lot of ideas that I myself also defend, but after some pages entered the dark room of extremism, defending all the old modes, and pointing the finger at all the new modes. Internet brought us a lot of problems, but brought also a lot of good things, we're still finding ways to make the best of it, and finding ways to deal with the problems. We can't just shutdown everything, in order to maintain status quo. What we need to do is to be aware of all the chan...more

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Dec 23, 2012 Tim Chang rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: business, sociology

pretty far on the rant-ish end of the spectrum, but some excellent and thought-provoking points are made.

Here were the key takeaways and questions that the book raised for me:
- democratization of content/media results in the loudest (and often least credible) getting most attention, and hence you can't trust anything on the web.
- this is leading to the death of culture (and the loss of taste makers and fact checkers) and commerce -- the trend is towards overall value-destruction (vs. value cre...more pretty far on the rant-ish end of the spectrum, but some excellent and thought-provoking points are made.

Here were the key takeaways and questions that the book raised for me:
- democratization of content/media results in the loudest (and often least credible) getting most attention, and hence you can't trust anything on the web.
- this is leading to the death of culture (and the loss of taste makers and fact checkers) and commerce -- the trend is towards overall value-destruction (vs. value creation) since free/niche ad can't create enough jobs and $ to replace the traditional industry that's being destroyed
- accountability + democracy is key -- if web2.0 is anonymous, then chaos rules and there can be no trust to engender true community
- China is villified for piracy of product, but why not web2.0 users for mass piracy and plagiarism of content and IP?
- web2.0 is a giant vanity press: masturbatory and self-referencing. Wisdom of crowds also equals mass delusion? (e.g. Wikipedia)
- web2.0 benefits = niche categories (pop culture/realtime?) + giving voice back to audience. But the role of editor/moderator will need to come back in to offset this...
- the best strategy now for advertisers is splogging, flogging and social media engineering?
- web2.0 is mostly public version of idle chat/IM...often a flood of rants by the loudest and the most ignorant. Norm and Annie Lei: "America's biggest asset is lots of dumb, ignorant people...how to exploit and moentize them?" Ex: forum boards are dominated by customers you don't want, e.g. no-life loudmouths
- solution: monetize masses' desire to be famous? Rather than selling DVDs, sell people the perceived chance to be in a movie?
- web2.0 is worse than big brother -- the dumbest masses are becoming their own big brother now?
- Is Google becoming the real life Matrix? (Also self-created by the masses...)
- if we operate as if everything will be free and meant to be pirated, what incentive exists to create truly good stuff. Ex: free bikes and cars everywhere leads to lowest common denominator
- web2.0 is a weapon for have-nots and losers vs established system and gatekeepers: similar to the old "God is Dead" argument?
- solution: front of tail premium/moderation + long tail audience participation (Citizendium vs wikipedia), with *clear delineation* (ex: Guardian Unltd online vs NYT online)
- doomsday scenario: Jorge Luis Borges' "Total Library" with no logic or organization
- truth is destroyed if everyone's voice is equal? Then there is no truth but the one you create for yourself
- should advertisers "buy" or fake "trust" via shilling on SNS and blogs? Pay for UGC/social campaigns instead to drop costs? Disguise ad as content, since you can't tell difference on web2.0 anyway?
- citizen journalism is good for niche, frivolous, pop culture -- since the writers are not accountable or trained, it's best for them to focus on stuff that "doesn't really matter"?(less)

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Dec 11, 2012 Little Danny rated it 1 of 5 stars

Unjustifiably elitist, Keen is a pompous, Lippmann-esque asshole who assumes a general dearth of mental capacities on the part of the layperson. He makes the odd convincing argument, but largely misses the mark in his discussions of online publics, relying on rhetorical bullying and scare-tactics. He champions Encyclopedia Britannica as the truest form of expert knowledge, while deriding Wikipedia as little more than a collection of anonymous morons' ramblings, yet seems blissfully unaware that...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Trang rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, non-fiction, visual-culture

I couldn't come to a concrete conclusion whether to embrace or reject Keen's ideas. Whenever I reread the book, my mind race with contradicting thoughts. There were some critical points in his argument which are not persuasive enough to get me on board, yet they're not something I could lightly dismiss either. Besides, Keen touches a lot on the aspects of economy and yet sadly I'm not well-informed on this topic to give out judgement. I'll probably read some contradicting books for a better unde...more

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Jun 22, 2012 Duncan rated it 1 of 5 stars

There are two books with this name and I thought this was the other one. This one is the stupid one, a scree against youtube, wikipedia and crowds in general.

It is primarily about the ill effects of the web.

My critique, such as it is, benefits from hindsight, as when the book was written wikipedia had only 3 million entries. Still, as polemic, this book is all noise and no substance. It decries mob rule on the web and the fall of the expert. It intentionally devalues daily human activity. It pr...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Malcolm rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book is a sharply argued analysis of trends in the use of the Internet which the author believes are leading to a breakdown in our values, serious harm to the economy and the end to American culture.
Its value lies mostly in its listing of the many aspects of internet use that people need to be aware of: copyright theft of music, film and video and print; internet gambling, internet pornography, internet addiction, the trivialization of discourse in Twitter, other microblogs and blogs in gen...more

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Jan 09, 2012 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Very relevant for anyone working in today's internet. Well researched. Slightly outdated today and obviously released in 2007, but nonetheless some very good, important points, ideas, facts and examples about human culture and how the internet has changed it. After hearing Keen speak about it, it makes more sense that it's meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek at times and not as serious as it seems. In my opinion, the book is a little too naive with such faith in mainstream media, in authority...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Antabaka rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some good, some bad. The parts about the research institutes that are financed directly by the recording companies is crap, which is to be expected. Also he should stress a bit further that the PARENTS are the frontline of defense - not the system itself. And I dont get his obsession with online gambling/betting. He devotes entirely too many pages on such a minor issue.

Add to that that there are some repetitions (and the book isn't that huge to start with), I think that the contents could have b...more

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Mar 21, 2011 Julie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I adore that there's a "Google preview" link on this book's page, and the fact that I'm reviewing it on Goodreads -- which is an aggregation of amateur opinion if ever there was one. Something just feels right about it, ha.

Anyway. Keen has some interesting points, but they're couched in such hyperbole and alarmism that it's hard to stomach -- you have to take this book with an enormous grain of salt. (Luckily for me, I read this so I can argue against it in my honours thesis.) I think the new 20...more

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Jul 29, 2010 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

In cyberspace, nobody can hear you scream. That’s because everybody’s too busy blogging brickbats at Sarah Palin, corrupting Bill Gates’ profile on Wikipedia, poking their buddies on Facebook, and recording a juggling video on YouTube. Simultaneously.

At least, this is what Andrew Keen would have you believe. In The Cult of the Amateur, Keen launches a full-frontal assault on the wave of user-generated content that, in his view, has turned the information superhighway into a tenth circle of Hell...more

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Jul 02, 2010 John rated it 3 of 5 stars

Keen founded Audiocafe.com and looked as if he might be one of the rich kids of the net before, in 2004, seeing the light. In this impassioned polemic, while obviously still retaining much of his enthusiasm for the good things that the net might prove to be, he warns us of all the aspects we prefer to ignore -- i.e., he tries to shake us out of our collective state of denial over the dangers not so much of digital piracy (although he has plenty to say on this) or the oceans of hardcore porn engu...more Keen founded Audiocafe.com and looked as if he might be one of the rich kids of the net before, in 2004, seeing the light. In this impassioned polemic, while obviously still retaining much of his enthusiasm for the good things that the net might prove to be, he warns us of all the aspects we prefer to ignore -- i.e., he tries to shake us out of our collective state of denial over the dangers not so much of digital piracy (although he has plenty to say on this) or the oceans of hardcore porn engulfing our children (plenty on that too) but of the very "democratization of knowledge" that we're supposed to accept as a good thing. As he points out repeatedly, there's a very good reason why human society grew to contain experts whom lay people (who might themselves be experts in other spheres) could consult on matters involving specialist knowledge: we do not rely on the wisdom of crowds if we need surgery to remove a brain tumour, so why do we expect it could serve us any better when we look up the Wikipedia entry on neurosurgery? Yet the existence of Wikipedia, with the often scanty and unreliable knowledge of its contributors and editors, is driving the companies that, employing an army of specialist writers and editors, produce (or used to produce) conventional encyclopedias; soon our culture will have entirely replaced reference works containing largely reliable content with a compendium filled to a great extent with amateur suppositions and, too often, deliberate falsifications but with the single benefit that it's easy to access and free.

It's not just Wikipedia, of course, that concerns Keen: Wikipedia is merely an example of how the internet is destroying knowledge: what it's offering is not so much a democratization as mob rule, with the mob very often having no more brains than a lynch mob. Keen was writing slightly too early to deal with the grievous effect that the internet-driven proliferation of misinformation, pseudoscience and claptrap concerning -- i.e., denying -- anthropogenic global warming is having on our decision-making; but he fingers all the elements of that fiasco: the oil-industry-funded astroturf groups that are everywhere, credited by hundreds of millions globally who have never so much as heard of sourcewatch.org or snopes.com; the tendency of too many of us to believe the voice that shouts loudest rather than the one that knows what it's talking about; the rapid decline of professional, responsible journalism, which has to be paid for, in the face of "citizen journalism" (i.e., amateur, often partisan or corrupt or ignorant or bigoted, fulminations), which is free; the perils of an overabundance of information sources (even if there wasn't the problem of there being nothing obvious to distinguish their relative reliability, especially if you've become so punch drunk from the bombardment of false information that your critical faculties are deadened); the fact that this tsunami of false information and untruth is not educating us but actually making us more ignorant -- yet, even in that state of ever-increasing stupidity, more convinced that our opinions are as good as anyone else's. The list could go on.

There's a very telling anecdote here about the world-renowned expert on global warming who tried to correct various errors of fact in the Wikipedia article on the subject. He was countered by a Wikipedia editor who, unconcerned by his own ignorance, criticized the expert harshly for constantly "pushing his own POV". When the expert took this higher up within the Wikipedia structure, he discovered to his horror that everyone supported this opinionated buffoon.

The destruction of common knowledge and the consequent deterioration of our civil and political discourse are not Keen's only subjects. He's concerned also with what could loosely be termed the arts. Sturgeon's Law, that 90% of everything is crap, applied to cultural material that had been selected and massaged by trained editors or their equivalents. With the "democratization of culture", with the internet offering an open mic night that never, ever ends, Sturgeon's 90% climbs almost exponentially. Consider: If you have 1000 books of which 100 are worth reading, the chances are (especially through recommendations by friends) you'll encounter much of the good stuff; but, if you have 100,000 books of which 200 have merit, it's quite likely that you and your friends may never encounter any of the good stuff. The internet (and other digital technology) having opened up the opportunity for anyone to "publish" their book, this is the situation we're confronting. And the knock-on effect of all this substitute culture -- the awful novels, the tuneless garage bands, etc. -- being available for free is that the businesses which used to filter out the garbage and find the good stuff for us are collapsing into bankruptcy, the expertise of their staff being permanently lost to our society. It's hard to feel much sympathy for the music industry, I know, after it treated consumers like shit for decades, but it did actually serve a useful purpose. And do we really want feature movies to vanish, leaving us with nothing but YouTube and reality TV to watch?

This book's not flawless -- it's often a bit repetitive -- but it's extraordinarily readable with lots of chewy anecdotal goodness, and its author has something of genuine importance to say: there are parts I'd dispute, but they're peripheral . . . and, anyway, it's one of the marks of a good book that it should make the reader think hard enough to formulate a counterargument. Even if you think everything's hunky-dory with the internet and the "democratization of knowledge" is a wunnerful, wunnerful thing -- in fact, especially if you think everything's hunky-dory with the internet and the "democratization of knowledge" is a wunnerful, wunnerful thing -- I'd give this book a try.

And every libertarian you know should be required to read the book's Chapter 3, "Truth and Lies", before opening their mouths yet again to lecture you on how freedom of speech is so important it should take precedence over all other considerations. Yes, obviously it's important; but at the moment it's being exploited by those who're stupid or actively malevolent, and some of its consequences -- like the campaign of AGW-denying falsehood -- may well destroy us.(less)

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Dec 02, 2009 Mary rated it 1 of 5 stars

First of all, I find it highly amusing to review this book online, since Keen thinks the proliferation of blogs is the scourge of all culture.

The first few chapters are one long, often repetitive, diatribe. He bemoans the “editor-free world” on the Net because the result is propaganda, deception, and advertising disguised as entertainment or news. Plus, people lose jobs, since traditional media outlets for paid reporters, editors, and music labels are losing their consumer base to the new Intern...more First of all, I find it highly amusing to review this book online, since Keen thinks the proliferation of blogs is the scourge of all culture.

The first few chapters are one long, often repetitive, diatribe. He bemoans the “editor-free world” on the Net because the result is propaganda, deception, and advertising disguised as entertainment or news. Plus, people lose jobs, since traditional media outlets for paid reporters, editors, and music labels are losing their consumer base to the new Internet outlets, where amateurs post content for free. Wow! I just summarized 95% of this book in two sentences.

Keen tries to tease a great deal out of his simple premise by going on and on about the concepts of trust, authorship, objectivity , annonimity, and reliability. He ends up seeming alarmist partly because he does such a poor job of exploring or even admitting to any of the positive aspects of the new “Web 2.0 world,” such as egalitarianism, freedom of expression, and expanding grassroots organizing. He waits until the very last chapter to breeze through “solutions” that should have been integrated with chapters to systematically explore both positive and negative aspects of specific technologies.

Although Keen makes a good case for never using Wikipedia again (because of its lack of professional oversight), and supporting well-researched, reliable sources for news and information (such as Encyclopedia Brittanica), he otherwise sounds like a technophobe who wishes it were still 1982. But my biggest problem with this book is the way Keen implicitly supports non-internet main-stream media as the best source for reliable news, as well as traditional non-internet outlets (i.e., big music labels) for consumer goods.

As I am reading The Cult of the Amateur, I have also started Noam Chomsky’s Understanding Power. So far, this is an amazing book. Among other things, Chomsky addresses deeper issues that Keen doesn’t seem to recognize when it comes to media outlets. Keen firmly puts forward a division between the Blogosphere or Web reporting and traditional news outlets: the former is the source of propaganda, advertising disguised as news, and unreliable information, and the latter is not. This is so laughable I cannot believe Keen could put it to paper. Traditional media doesn’t feed us propaganda every day?! Are we not saturated with advertising disguised as news, from the local broadcaster to NPR? Keen’s edited news world promotes the status-quo, where powerful media conglomerates control everything we see. Personally, I’d rather have my “editor-free world” any day.(less)

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Oct 14, 2009 Alex Johnson added it

Andrew Keene sets out to tell us why almost every aspect of today’s internet is fundamentally eroding society and commerce; and he might have succeeded if his reasoning had been more nuanced. The trouble is, the book is basically 300 pages of rhetoric rather than a balanced assessment of the rights and wrongs of how things are shaping up for the Internet.

As it happens I have attended a discussion group with Keene so I know that his intention had always been to write a polemic. However, both Mark...more

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Aug 05, 2009 Romulo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: social-webs, internet

Um livro muito criticado, mas que DEVE ser lido por todos que se interessam pela web 2.0. Esse é um dos poucos livros que faz críticas severas ao fato de que agora todos se tornaram autores, especialistas, palpiteiros e participantes da rede. O lado bom todos nós sabemos e celebramos. Mas quais são os problemas e desafios de um mundo onde fica cada vez mais difícil distinguir o que é verdadeiro do que é falso, o palpite de um estudo aprofundado? Essa é a questão que o livro procura responder.

Inf...more

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Jul 27, 2009 Mark Mikula rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Cult of the Amateur takes the view that opening up the web to all voices has a decidedly negative impact on our culture. With newspapers needing to layoff workers, Keen makes the point that expertise is being lost to masses of people who are, in many cases, ill-equipped to maintain journalistic standards. The web's cloak of anonymity and the amateur status of many bloggers and videographers also keep individuals from being held accountable for their views. Keen also questions how many indivi...more The Cult of the Amateur takes the view that opening up the web to all voices has a decidedly negative impact on our culture. With newspapers needing to layoff workers, Keen makes the point that expertise is being lost to masses of people who are, in many cases, ill-equipped to maintain journalistic standards. The web's cloak of anonymity and the amateur status of many bloggers and videographers also keep individuals from being held accountable for their views. Keen also questions how many individuals contributing to the web are actually shills for political parties or corporations, merely in place to add to the spin. With so much content available on the web and limited tools to estimate its value, users can easily be confused or overwhelmed.

He does not restrict his argument to journalism. He also presents the dwindling numbers of independent book stores and record stores as evidence of the trend. I found the book to be a compelling read, floating many ideas with excellent points of view from many people affected by the trend.

My minor quibbles: I think that the chapters could have been more starkly defined. The anecdotal evidence for the erosion of culture tries to stay on point, but the arguments for one industry do not stay in one chapter. They keep resurfacing. To me, it felt like the points being raised were diluted because the focus was returning to already covered ground.

Also, toward the end of the book, Keen brings up examples of Internet gambling and pornography, both of which he effectively ties into the argument for examples of web-supported industries that contribute to the erosion of culture. But his argument then goes in the direction of making a plea for parents to be gatekeepers for their children. These sections seemed ad hoc and more appropriate for a separate article outside of the book.

That aside, I strongly recommend the book, especially to anyone who feels threatened by the web or challenged by the difficult task of separating worthwhile content from electronic detritus. (less)

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Feb 03, 2013 Jim Razinha rated it 2 of 5 stars

Keen's book, published in 2007, is a ranting polemic against Web 2.0 and the sad fact that there is no journalistic integrity anymore in an arena where anyone can say anything virtually without consequence. Keen comes off as a self-righteous elitist throughout the book, pretty much casting everyone as stupid, but he made a few pretty good points with respect to the monstrous amount of non-vetted materials released every day.

His argument against Wikipedia has some merit, particularly in light of...more

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