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

by Andrew Keen

2.64 · rating details · 466 ratings · 150 reviews

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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

· 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) a...more

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Feb 29, 2008

Lon Harris rated it

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...more

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Sep 24, 2007

Kelly rated it

Shelves: 2007, sociology

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 fr...moreIn 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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Feb 23, 2008

C.K. rated it

While there are some interesting points of discussion in the book, it's far too hyperbolic, doom and gloom in perspective. Very black and white. Very polarized around one thought without much variation. So if you disagree with the one huge premise of the book (that the rise of the amateur is destroying culture), you won't enjoy it. It's also rather offensive how Keen continually refers to people as typing Monkeys. It reminds me of every other dull, short-sighted book throughout the ages which ha...more

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Aug 05, 2008

Adam rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: webby types

Shelves: annoying, read-2008, inspiring

On the one hand this is a very ranty and kind of confused argument about how there's lots of crap on the internet. Which is kind of an obvious statement and which ignores the fact that there's lots amazing stuff online as well. On the other hand it makes some good points about the consequences of over-estimating the worth of user-generated content.

Keen's "beware the amateurs they make everything shit" argument is initially directed against Web 2.0 (and I should point out th...moreOn the one hand this is a very ranty and kind of confused argument about how there's lots of crap on the internet. Which is kind of an obvious statement and which ignores the fact that there's lots amazing stuff online as well. On the other hand it makes some good points about the consequences of over-estimating the worth of user-generated content.

Keen's "beware the amateurs they make everything shit" argument is initially directed against Web 2.0 (and I should point out that he's an insider when it comes to the online stuff, so it is an expert opinion, however ranty it may be), but then the book broadens its scope to include things like online piracy, porn and gambling.

These things seem to me to be distinct from Web 2.0 and the problems inherent with amateur content. It's like he's trying to come up with as many reasons as possible that the internet is bad, and he comes across as a bit of a shrill and histrionic luddite - which he obviously isn't - as a result.

There are good points made, though, about things like the economic impact and cultural flow-on of things like file sharing and free classified listings. Newspapers and record companies will indeed have to come up with ways to deal with the new playing field, and this will impact on writers and musicians (as well as other creative types), but it feels like Keen is simply railing against change more than anything else.

It made me think of the Douglas Adams quote about technology whereby any tech that exists when you're born is perfectly natural, and any tech that is developed after you turn thirty is an abomination.

The last chapter is the best of the book. It presents a "where to now?" scenario that is optimistic, engaging and hopeful in a way that the rest of the book is not. It's a nice counterpoint to the shrill complaints and soapboxing that come before. You have to wade through some cranky stuff (as in "that guys's a crank!"), but it's sort of worth it.

I'm not saying this book was a waste of time - it got me thinking about some interesting stuff, and it did make some good points about making sure that creative people are rewarded for their efforts so that they can go on being creative people. I just didn't like the vaguely elitist line he drew between "experts" and "amateurs".

If nothing else, this is a good book for anyone who loves reading the letters to the editor so that they can scream at their partners about how this guy is such a freakin' idiot!(less)

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Mar 01, 2008

Douglas rated it

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 o...moreGiven 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

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 t...moreI 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

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...moreIf 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

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...more

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Aug 31, 2007

Jeremy rated it

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

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

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, listene...more

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Mar 01, 2008

James rated it

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 parti...more

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Jan 08, 2008

Bob rated it

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-expressio...moreOften 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

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...more

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Feb 03, 2009

Roger rated it

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 ...moreAs 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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Jan 29, 2012

Ben rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: politics-critique

The main message is one that I personally agree with. But mostly for reasons that differ from Andrew's.

To me it appears as if andrew is a bit frustrated and jealous of people like the founders of wikipedia, myspace and google. He used to be a silicon valley insider, then dropped out because he was disappointed. I just can't get rid of the feeling maybe he didn't catch up with the great ideas, missed an opportunity, etc... and has now become a born against technophile.

Well, th...more

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Jan 09, 2012

Alex rated it

"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 autho...more

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Aug 02, 2011

Antabaka rated it

· 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

· 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 thesi...more

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Jul 29, 2010

James rated it

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 cir...more

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Jul 02, 2010

John rated it

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...moreKeen 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

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 ...moreFirst 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,...more

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Aug 05, 2009

Romulo rated it

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 res...more

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Jul 27, 2009

Mark Mikula rated it

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...moreThe 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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Apr 28, 2009

Natbas rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. It is clear as daylight that Andrew Keen hates people who do things that they ought not do. He calls them Amateurs, but he means idiots- monkeys.

The introduction to this book says it all.

A friend of his tells him about his latest brainwave. He plans to write a software for publishing music, text and video on the internet. Nothing new, but still, the friend says,

"It's MySpace meets YouTube meets Wikipedia meets Google, on steroids"

And Keen...more

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Feb 28, 2010

Jan Brooks rated it

Andrew Keen provides a very thoughtful and thought-provoking dissertation on user-generated content of Web 2.0. He covers Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace (not much mention of FaceBook I notice) blogs, wikis, cookies, search engines, online gambling, prostitution, peer-to-peer sharing of MP3 files and plagiarism. His tone is not alarmist, but reasoned, which was the reason I kept reading the book, even though I didn’t agree with every point he made. I am not absolutely certain that I want to prote...more

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Feb 09, 2009

Kevin rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone that has an interest in Social Media, for better or worse

This past Monday I finished reading the cult of the amateur by Andrew Keen. From the moment I started reading this book I was surprised and taken back by the content and how the whole of Social Media could be viewed in such an overly negative way

My mind was filled with both thoughts of rage (yes rage) and miss-understandings of how one person (Keen) could be so overly negative and only see one side (the weaker side) of the argument surrounding Social Media and it's effect on a globa...moreThis past Monday I finished reading the cult of the amateur by Andrew Keen. From the moment I started reading this book I was surprised and taken back by the content and how the whole of Social Media could be viewed in such an overly negative way

My mind was filled with both thoughts of rage (yes rage) and miss-understandings of how one person (Keen) could be so overly negative and only see one side (the weaker side) of the argument surrounding Social Media and it's effect on a global society.

Now it isn't that I think only good can come from Social Media, because that isn't the case, I am often highly critical of it myself and often share some of the same opinions as Keen ((The opinions I share are centred around Internet Gambling, Pornography etc.)) , but I believe I have much more of an open mind than Keen puts on display in this book.

Keen is overly critical and negative of everything (and I mean everything) that the Internet has offered society thus far, citing only the highlights when it serves his purpose. I fully understand this is how arguments are generally presented (in order to make money), however, a good argument would be one that presents "both sides of the coin". This type of book would let the readers choose sides for themselves and if an author can do this and readers still choose to agree with the author than a solid statement has been made. This is something that Keen fails to do in the cult of the amateur.

I originally picked up this book not for it's content but rather for the bright orange cover that it showed off. You see I am attracted to shiny objects and bright colours so this was a natural read for me based on criteria such as this.

Although not a great read by any means, the cult of the amateur is a must read for anyone interested in Social Media, on either side of the argument. At the very least Keen's writing provides some background information to many of the services and websites that the majority of Internet users make use of on a daily basis.(less)

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Jul 24, 2011

Jaime rated it

As a person who makes her income online, I could not resist reading a book that claimed – in the title no less – that the internet is assaulting our economy. Luckily, I made a good choice with this one and could hardly put it down until I finished reading it.

Andrew Keen starts off with a strong argument. You have heard of the Infinite Monkey Theorem? Infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters can create Shakespeare? According to Keen, “Today’s technology hooks all those monkeys up with...moreAs a person who makes her income online, I could not resist reading a book that claimed – in the title no less – that the internet is assaulting our economy. Luckily, I made a good choice with this one and could hardly put it down until I finished reading it.

Andrew Keen starts off with a strong argument. You have heard of the Infinite Monkey Theorem? Infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters can create Shakespeare? According to Keen, “Today’s technology hooks all those monkeys up with all those typewriters” and Keen doesn’t like what he’s reading.

With plenty of statistics to draw upon, Cult of the Amateur takes us through the world of Web 2.0 and its influence on today’s world – which isn’t as good as you might think. From the music industry to the media, the internet has emerged as a severe threat to the way things happen today.

Keen likes to point out how amateur journalists (if they can call themselves that) are poisoning the media. However, in a world where the media has legal permission to lie, I think Keen’s defense of the media is somewhat misplaced. While he doesn’t outright say it, he implies that all authority figures are honest when it’s obvious they’re not. It’s no wonder the amateur hour has taken off – people don’t trust authority anymore.

There is so much Keen touches on – from media, to the music industry to the economy – adding up to way more than I can talk about in this one review. But trust me, it’s all fascinating.

With all the build up about the problems, naturally I was looking to what kind of solutions Keen would propose to battle what he’d built up into an overwhelming tide of idiocy and mediocrity. Keen completely impressed me not only with his proposed solutions but with his criticisms of current systems.

In the conclusion, he even admits the faults of his beloved music industry, understanding that people will forgo a sixteen dollar CD in favour of cherry-picking songs for a dollar each on iTunes.(less)

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