That’s The Cult of the Amateur, according to Andrew Keen. And he says that me and you and every other non-professional creating content on the Internet are responsible for “killing culture.” His book has made a bit of a splash (I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve listened to two NPR interviews), and he is greatly afraid that the flood of user-generated crap will wash away professional journalism, good music and movies, even human morals.
I think he has a couple of points–the Internet is certainly a threat to traditional media and the professions and ways of doing business that are associated with them. And I’m willing to admit that you sometimes have to distill a few buckets of swill to get an ounce of finely distilled content (much of this is subjective, of course). Ironically, the few good comments he makes are drowned out by his shrill warnings, technophile profiling and uninformed arguments. In some ways he’s more of an amateur than those he critiques. Here’s a couple of quotes from his interview on KCRW’s To The Point:
It wasn’t written for bloggers for a couple of reasons: firstly I’m not sure that bloggers read…I don’t think they buy books. They expect all their culture should be free. And I think they have a hostility towards the printed book.
When I look at young people, I don’t see natural born filters [of information and content], I simply see anarchy out there and I see increasingly a culture in which it’s impossible to find actual things of value.
Part of me wants to completely dismiss Keen as obsolete, as representative of all who had a stake in the old culture, as some old fogey who mutters about MySpace one minute and then goes on about teens and that dang hip hop music and all that lascivious dancing they do. That said, I’ll probably check his book out from the library (because I expect that my culture should be free) and give his thesis a fair trial.
Keen is probably right about one thing. The old culture is dying. But it’s not innocent. It was guilty of robbing and killing the previous one, taking what it liked and transforming it to suit its own aesthetic. I accept that I’m a member of the cult of the amateur, and with these fingers I strike down the old hierarchies that Keen adores.
9 responses so far ↓
1 nee // Jul 13, 2007 at 3:25 am
You’ll have to give us a book review. He sounds rather petulant.
2 Chris Rusch // Jul 13, 2007 at 5:43 am
I like the idea that blogging is an act of descent. I think that what has corporate media so scared is that their profits are in danger because they cannot control the content we consumed.
3 Elaine Frei // Jul 13, 2007 at 7:38 am
It’s just the same old argument about “high” culture versus “popular” culture, as far as I can see. I caught the end of an interview with this same guy, I think, on one of the cable news channels the other day. Anyway, he was saying the same things. He sounded, as nee said, quite petulant.
The thing is, I don’t know that I believe there is a difference between high and popular culture, other than the fact that one is perceived as being patronized by the rich and supposedly “sophisitcated” while the other is patronized by, well, everyone else. The problem with that is that to a large extent sophistication is the last refuge of the truly boring; these are the people who, like Mr. Keen, sniff their nose at anything that isn’t rich enough for their taste, and I don’t mean that just in a sense of material wealth. Of the people I have been in contact with in my own life who consider themselves to be sophisticated, I have to say that most of them were in fact quite shallow.
After having said all that, I probably agree with Mr. Keen that most young people aren’t that great at filtering out “good” from “bad”; most are likely more interested in “cool” versus “not cool”. But that has always been the case, I’ll wager.
I think Mr. Keen’s biggest sin, based on your description of what he said and on the little I saw of that interview with who I assume to have been him, is that he seems very invested in the cult of the authority, the idea that not only do only a very few people really know what is going on in any particular subject area, but that this is the way it should be and that anyone else outside that brotherhood - be it of scientists, journalists, historians, government officials, or whatever category - is not entitled to an opinion and should just keep our mouths shut and do what we’re told…like what we’re told to like, buy what we’re told to buy, think what we’re told to think. To know our place, essentially, and not overstep those bounds.
Heck, I know that 97 percent of everything is crap. But that applies to what comes out of the mouths (and pens and computers) of the professionals as well as those of us who are, proudly, amateurs at the blogging game. The mistake Mr. Keen seems to make is that if one gets paid for doing something (that is, after all, the main criteria for being considered a professional at something), that automatically makes it better and more valuable. Which is, in my experience and in my opinion, not necessarily the case.
4 TammyT // Jul 13, 2007 at 9:05 am
Elaine - Very yes.
5 Jonathan Blake // Jul 13, 2007 at 9:08 am
Someone probably said the same things about the printing press.
6 nee // Jul 13, 2007 at 9:34 am
Jonathan - my thoughts exactly! Wasn’t it illegal at one point in Europe to have a Bible in one’s home as all interpretation of scripture should only come from the Church?
7 Miko // Jul 13, 2007 at 2:16 pm
This makes me just want to ignore him entirely:
But since I know that would be committing the same mistakes as he, I probably shouldn’t. That seems like just a fantastically blinded, ignorant, and above all incorrect statement. As Elise said, just because you’re paid doesn’t make you better; I think this statement, and that fact that he published a book full of similar ones is proof of one fact and one fact only: freedom of the press. Can we sue him for libel…?
8 John // Jul 13, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Just returned from Borders where I flipped through the book (I refuse to give Keen any money for it, and encourage you all to refrain as well–we’ll show him how we can access free content, sans internet). I thought his ideas would be a bit better supported, maybe a bit of nuance or qualification tossed in, but so far, no go. I’ll read a little further on my next visit. But like Miko, I do feel an obligation to at least try to take him seriously.
Elaine, I really like the idea of the artificiality of the divide between high and low culture. It’s something I fought against in academia: most old school scholars (and Western practitioners) of Buddhism were interested in texts, doctrines and famous teachers, while the younger crowd (myself included) were switching the focus to the the Buddhism of the masses, which is often messy, syncretistic and full of all sorts of ritual and superstition.
Chris, I’m so with you–let’s subvert the old channels!
Regarding the printing press: I agree that it’s hard to avoid this parallel. The other one that comes to mind is the protests of the printing shops with the introduction of the steam powered printing press (and associated technological developments).
9 Bored in Vernal // Jul 14, 2007 at 8:44 am
Have you read this blog post by Nicholas Carr? I’m one who tends to use the internet as “a vessel of quasi-religious longing” and I was interested in the points he made as well as those he argued against.
Leave a Comment