The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture by Andrew Keen (2007)

Review by Donald Clark

Every fresh paradigm has critics who hold on to the old paradigm by putting together every possible argument against the new. This is healthy and keeps us honest. So in line with the old adage of ‘keeping thy enemy close to you’ I bought the now infamous, anti-Web 2.0 book. I could have downloaded the text, but that would have been playing into Keen’s hands!

The fatal flaw in the book is the failure to recognise that his so-called mainstream publishing media are themselves perspectival. Watch FOX news, read the Daily Mail, or the Guardian for that matter. Even public sector broadcasting such as the BBC finds it impossible to be impartial. This view of top-down, knowledge creation is hopelessly idealistic. It doesn’t help that one of his main targets is the magnificent Wikipedia.

Wonderful Wikipedia

In choosing to target Wikipedia, he’s bitten off more than he can chew. Now the 9th most popular website in the world, employing only 7 people on a budget of around £700,000 per year, this must be the cheapest, most useful, exciting, knowledge initiative in history. Nearly 200 articles per day are added, and it’s the discussion forums behind the articles that show its honest approach to publishing. It’s the ‘admins,’ around 10,000 who police the content and they do a damn good job.

The Nature research surely turns Keen’s dagger on himself. A peer-reviewed publisher showed in a comparative trial that Wikipedia was of a similar standard to the Encylopedia Britannica. Note that Encylopedia Britannica tried to get a 20-page rebuttal published – Nature refused. Wikipedia has earned its status as a knowledge base that is well policed, tries its best on citations and sees knowledge as a growing, moveable feast.

False dichotomy

Keen believes that the ‘professionals’ (meaning people like him) know more than the ‘amateurs.’ The flaw here is that there is no absolute line between professionals and amateurs. Many talented individuals contribute to user-generated content, blogs, wikis, podcasting and other Web 2.0 sources. One could take his argument to extremes and insist on everything being peer-reviewed. If that were the case, his book would never have been published. Many of the people who created the internet and its tools dropped out of the university system and changed the landscape because they didn’t like the command and control structure of traditional publishing.

‘Big up’ for blogs

To take a specific example, he fails to see that blogs are produced, commented on and read by a broad church that includes professionals and amateurs. In the learning sphere you find a community of bloggers who have tons of expertise and experience really working through issues that in turn help shape the market. It’s the diversity of voices and views that matter. Jay Cross has changed the terms of debate with ‘informal learning’. My voice tends to be focused on ‘mythbusting’ with an appeal for more science in learning theory and practice. Clive Shepherd is the ‘voice of reason’. To get personal for a moment, the accusation is that Web 2.0 folk simply read each other’s stuff and pat each other on the back. Have a look at my blog’s postings on NLP, BBC Jam, BBC Bitesize, Maslow, Rogers and any number of other topics. I get everything from character assassination to anonymous stalking. It’s great fun but hardly pats on the back. There are hundreds more moving the debate forward in a far more effective way that the rather dull training press and journals.

Holier than thou

In effect, Keen is touting a ‘holier than thou’ argument. We know more than you – so keep out of it. Well, that’s turned out to be a little rich. The web is a welcome check on those in control and with authority. Is it any wonder that China and other states are banning YouTube and other Web 2.0 sites? They’re scared, and I for one admire the people who stand up in those countries and tell us what it’s like to live in that censored world. Web 2.0 is more than a publishing phenomenon; it’s a view of the world, where freedom of expression is valued.

In Keen’s defence

The book is unashamedly polemical but I like polemic. It has a place in the pantheon of debate and it’s good to have a few Davids attack the new Goliath. What this book has done is galvanise and strengthen the Web 2.0 movement by forcing it to examine its weaknesses. Other digital sceptics include Jaron Larnier’s theory of ‘Digital Maoism’. We have to be careful in avoiding ‘groupthink’ by putting all new ideas and web phenomena on the block for criticism. This is all good.

Final word

Keen would regard this review as nothing less than amateurish gibberish. This begs a question of Keen himself: What divine right does a ‘failed dot.com guy with a grudge’ have over the rest of us? Keen is simply part of a bigger more open picture where discussion, debate and participation are valued. He’s an amateur contributor, not a qualified expert. More power to his and all our elbows.