The launch of Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur; How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy is receiving much media coverage, a lot of it focusing on the fury from the blogosphere.
I have not read the book so will refrain from comment. But I can recommend two reviews of it. Dan Gillmor describes it as “a shabby and dishonest treatment of an important topic”. And Lawrence Lessig offers a devastating critique, arguing that “what is puzzling about this book is that it purports to be a book attacking the sloppiness, error and ignorance of the Internet, yet it itself is shot through with sloppiness, error and ignorance”.
This is the sort of critique that the mainstream media should be providing. Journalists should go beyond just simply reporting the “he said, she said” of the story and take the time to seriously examine the arguments and claims in Keen’s book.
Filed under: Web 2.0, YouTube, journalism, user-generated content
The most entertaining review of the book so far, in The Sunday Times’ Culture, essentially likens Jimmy Wales to Pol Pot: “But talent is “the needle in today’s digital haystack”, says Keen. In a world without newspapers, publishing houses, film studios, radio and TV stations there’ll be nobody to discover and – no less important – to nurture talent. The result could be no less catastrophic than Pol Pot’s decision to eliminate talent and expertise in Cambodia by mass execution.” (http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article1874668.ece)