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

by Andrew Keen
The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture
book data
223 ratings, 2.54 average rating, 94 reviews (more data...)
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published
June 5th 2007 (first published 2008) by Currency

binding
Hardcover, 240 pages

isbn
0385520808    (isbn13: 9780385520805)

description
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...more




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oriana
09/26/08
oriana rated it: 2 of 5 stars (review of isbn 1857885201)

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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Lon Harris
02/21/08
Lon Harris rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in February, 2008
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
Like this review?   yes   (6 people liked it)
  2 comments

Kelly Hoffman
08/30/07
Kelly Hoffman rated it: 1 of 5 stars

bookshelves: 2007, sociology
Read in September, 2007
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...more
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C.k.
02/21/08
C.k. rated it: 1 of 5 stars

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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James
Read in September, 2008
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 te...more
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Adam
05/26/08
Adam rated it: 2 of 5 stars (review of isbn 1857883934)

bookshelves: annoying, inspiring, read-2008
Read in August, 2008
recommends it for: webby types
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...more
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  1 comment

Douglas
03/01/08
Douglas rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in June, 2007
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...more
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Julia
02/22/08
Julia rated it: 1 of 5 stars

bookshelves: contemporary-culture
recommends it for: Luddites
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...more
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Angelo
02/10/08
Angelo rated it: 3 of 5 stars

bookshelves: digital-economy
Read in January, 2008
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 mod...more
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Mike
06/29/07
Mike rated it: 1 of 5 stars

Read in July, 2007
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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Jeremy
08/31/07
Jeremy rated it: 1 of 5 stars

Read in August, 2007
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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Matthew
02/23/08
Matthew rated it: 1 of 5 stars

Read in February, 2008
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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Tom
10/09/08
Tom rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in October, 2008
recommended to Tom by: Barnes & Noble
recommends it for: Internet Junkies
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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James
03/01/08
James rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in December, 2007
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 dinn...more
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Bob
01/08/08
Bob rated it: 2 of 5 stars

bookshelves: know-your-enemy
Read in November, 2007
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...more
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Jonathan
07/02/07
Jonathan rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in July, 2007
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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Roger
02/03/09
Roger rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in February, 2009
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 ...more
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Natbas
04/26/09
Natbas rated it: 3 of 5 stars

Read in April, 2009
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Bradley
This books seems to suffer from the same problems of many other polemical tracts these days. Keen makes a very good point about the demise of the gatekeeper class - something that has indeed become very prevalent lately. This argument would have been best made over the course of an article; the argument does not hold together over the course of an entire book. The later chapters seem to be more about the evils of Google and other large internet companies than about the failing of newer forms ...more
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Kevin
02/03/09
Kevin rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in February, 2009
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...more
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The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy (Paperback)
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