Andrew Keen on the Cult of the Amateur

Leveling traditional media will lead to profound media illiteracy.

Showdown between Digital and Mainstream Media

By Orato Staff June 22nd, 2007 - 03:53 pm PT

The cult of the amateur is the love affair we have for amateur-created content on the Internet. By amateur, I mean content created by people without the monetary reward that allows them to pay their mortgage or put food on the table. I'm skeptical about the notion of open culture. I'm a traditionalist in the sense that I respect and venerate closed culture.

In my mind, closed culture is defined by gatekeepers, so it's traditional culture as we understand it. Take a newspaper, for example, where you have editors and publishers within a closed ecosystem, and out of that, you get information and content. The upshot of that is the blogosphere, where anyone can publish, and it doesn't require any particular skills. Everyone has access to the same information, so it's a network economy.

In my book The Cult Of The Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture, I've referred to some of the people engaging in this network economy as 'exuberant monkeys.' That was just a metaphor. I don't necessarily hold this group in disdain; what I'm critical of is the idea that they are as capable of generating information and entertainment as reliably as professionals. I think it will result in profound media illiteracy. The closed media does a reasonably good job of creating the foundation for media literacy because it's an ecosystem that has been built up by many decades.

Amateur Creators and Democratization of Media

I haven't always felt this way. I was one of the pioneers of digital media. I founded Audio Cafe in the mid-90s, a digital music site in the Silicon Valley tradition. I saw the Internet as a way of distributing the high quality culture I loved -- but there were problems with that. I didn't anticipate the piracy ramifications or the impact it would have on retail. To give mainstream media a kick in the pants is actually a good thing. But there's a difference between giving it a kick in the pants and giving it a kick in the crotch. You don't want to kill the thing.

One of the most controversial parts of my book concerns the relationship between digital media and mainstream media. You can't just blame the decline of newspapers on the rise of new media. The physical act of reading a newspaper is being undermined by many things.

I do understand that we can't stand still; it's absurd to imagine we can just hang on to our analog culture. What concerns me is in an economy in which fewer and fewer consumers are willing to pay for online content.

I'm also concerned with the way the most successful Silicon Valley companies -- Google, YouTube and MySpace -- are essentially shell companies, they're not content companies. I don't see the professional content people benefiting from this revolution.

Chris Anderson's The Long Tail

I don't buy Chris Anderson's long tail argument, which says the future of business is selling less of more in numerous niche markets. I respect Anderson, but I think it's really wishful thinking. If you accept Anderson's argument, we'll all be able to cobble together a living through the creation of content in this open system. I simply don't see evidence of that; the vast majority of people are not making money on the Internet.

The last thing I want is to destroy the Internet. What I want is to make it a better place. It has amazing potential, but I want to challenge childish idealism of web radicals, because I think that is ultimately what is destroying the Internet.

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Comments

 
Posted 29/06/2007 at 4:10pm Jeff Denton

"Having said all that, you clearly see the significant layoffs in the music business, the collapse of retail and the massive layoffs among journalists in mainstream newspapers-the storm will quickly engulf the television, the movie industry, and ultimately, even the publishing industry. All these are consequences of the digital revolution."

Yup, and in 1980 the digital revolution was going to give us the 'paperless office'. If these predictions had been made in 1995, they might have been believable. To seriously claim today that the television, movie and publishing industries are under immediate threat from the democratic creation of digital content is laughable. Business models have and will continue to adapt in order to protect enormous interests and guess what, people still read books. Why, I even read one last week...and my wife and kids read too!

So please, don't fear the YouTube flunkies. Are they a passing fad? No. Will they ever define culture? Sure they will - for a certain demographic. But it ticks me off when the elites assume we're all too stupid to decide high culture for ourselves and, if it weren't for their guidance, we'd all be drooling chimps squealing over the latest web video vulgarity. Please!

Posted 10/08/2008 at 4:21pm John Hatch

I think Mr. Keen is trying to make a meal out of some pretty thin gruel.
Kill culture? I think the internet has enriched it by readily providing vast instantaneous information to anyone who wants it.

Of course one has to check for veracity, but that is true of all media. If I write something for ICH or Orato, I'm as careful as any 'trained' journalist. This is out of respect for potential readers, my own reputation, and the truth.

The popularity of 'citizen journalism' has come about precisely (in part) because the so-called mainstream media cannot be trusted. As such I have been published alongside the likes of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Ralph Nader, Gore Vidal, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, John Pilger, Harold Pinter, to name a few. Many of my articles have been reprinted at many sources, from Moscow to the Philippines. I may not get paid, but nor am I in anyone's pocket. No one tells me what to say, or not say. My pieces aren't news, they are just opinion pieces. Editorials. Agree or not, but it's to my advantage to get my facts straight and to try to write in a manner that readers will find interesting.

According to Mr. Keen, we should accept what 'professionals' like Judith Miller write.

If the New York Times is the newspaper of record, then we're in a lot of trouble.

The Wall Street Journal is now owned by Rupert Murdoch, and now is even more a biased shill for the neo-cons.

I'm not really interested in listening to what Sun Yeung Moon has to say, although George W. Bush is, and is happy to take his money (so was his father).

The people on hate radio make hundreds of millions. That certainly doesn't make them journalists.

Neither is Bill O'Reilly. Fox news has no journalists. Neither does CNN (Wolf Blitzer: 'Thanks for comin' in.')

ABC falsely reported that Saddam was behind the anthrax attacks, claiming four high level sources. They were lied to, but although they have no debt of loyalty to liars, they refuse to expose the liars, and thus the most likely real perps.

The media are guilty of huge sins of commission (propaganda and outright lies), but also sins of omission- anything the authorities don't want mentioned- the truth behind 9/11, the truth about war in Afghanistan and Iraq, torture, kidnappings, murder, and on and on. New Orleans. Blackwater. Halliburton. Corruption in the VP's office. The sub-prime scandal. No bid contracts.The state of health care. The state of education. Big pharma. Etc.

In the US (and to a large extent in Canada) with a few exceptions there is no longer a functioning independent media. Do you think you'll learn the truth about Israel's brutal 60 year holocaust in an Asper-owned newspaper? Was Time magazine ever independent of Republican party bias? Even the Reader's Digest used to be (and probably still is) a source for CIA planted stories.

In the face of so much paid media prostitution, to argue that citizens seeking truth are somehow 'killing culture' is beyond ludicrous.


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