Andrew Keen interviews leading opinion makers from the worlds of technology, media and policy.
Andrew Keen interviews leading opinion makers from the worlds of technology, media and policy.
Posted by andrewkeen on Friday, 02 September 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Andrew Keen interviews leading opinion makers from the worlds of technology, media and policy.
Posted by andrewkeen on Friday, 02 September 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Andrew Keen interviews leading opinion makers from the worlds of technology, media and policy.
Posted by andrewkeen on Friday, 02 September 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Andrew Keen interviews leading opinion makers from the worlds of technology, media and policy.
Posted by andrewkeen on Friday, 02 September 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Andrew Keen interviews leading opinion makers from the worlds of technology, media and policy.
Posted by andrewkeen on Friday, 02 September 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted by andrewkeen on Saturday, 23 July 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
America’s most talented writers are discovering the electronic network. In “Super Sad True Love Story,” Gary Shteyngart’s best selling trip into the digital future, Shteyngart invents a darkly disturbing world in which we all wear electronic pendants around our necks called “apparats” which reveal everything about us to everybody. In the future, he tells us, privacy will be dead and our blazingly public lives will be broadcast by transparent ranking networks (think Klout and Peer Index on steroids).
But, as Shteyngart told me when I caught up with him yesterday, the real challenge for today’s writer is that the future has already arrived. “You can’t make this stuff up”, he told me, while explaining that the present no long exists and that his most fantastic literary inventions such as entirely transparent onion-skin jeans (which reveal all our most intimate jewels) are more than simply figments of his sparkling imagination.
Posted by andrewkeen on Saturday, 23 July 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
According to Gary Shteyngart, the best-selling author of novels like “Super Sad True Love Story” and “Absurdistan,” paying for his books means that he doesn’t have to work at a gas station or a car dealership. When we pay for one of his books, Shteyngart explained when we spoke earlier this week, it “allows me to produce more work.” Buying a book, he insists, represents an investment in creativity.
And creativity – real creativity – may be at a premium today – at least according to Shteyngart. As he argues, the Internet may be killing our eccentricity and transforming all of us into 140-character conformists. Thus, in today’s networked age, he says, there is an acute need for writers who can grab our attention and drag us away from broadcasting our boring selves on Facebook and Twitter.
Posted by andrewkeen on Saturday, 23 July 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, Eli Pariser’s New York Times best-selling new book, has been applauded by net skeptics like Jaron Lanier and Evgeny Morozov as well as digital optimists like Clay Shirky and Craig Newmark. It’s an important book which argues that leading websites like Google and Facebook are delivering personalized information to us, thereby shielding Internet users from the broad news and ideas that traditional newspapers delivered to us.
Pariser, who is the President of the Board of MoveOn.org is concerned that the Internet isn’t living up to its original promise. And the Filter Bubble is a passionate polemic against Facebook and Google algorithms that simply serves up information that it believes the user wants to see. For Pariser, this is creating a less and less well informed public and compounding the ghettoization of contemporary intellectual and political life.
This is the first part of a two part interview with Pariser. Check in tomorrow to hear whether Pariser believes that progressives have lost faith in the Internet.
Posted by andrewkeen on Tuesday, 21 June 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
As the Chief Strategy Officer at Time Warner Cable, Peter Stern is responsible for planning the long term future of America’s second largest cable company. Much of his job involves rebuilding both the appearance and reality of the cable industry in a 21st century world of ubiquitous online video and revolutionary consumption devices like the iPad.
Stern is at his most provocative in his acknowledgement that cable needs to rebuild trust with its customers. In our interview last week, he spoke about Time Warner Cable’s commitment to providing their customers with what he calls the “4 anys”: being able to watch any video content, anytime, on any device, anywhere. Most importantly, he stressed that a traditional cable provider like Time Warner Cable needed to change from selling products to providing their customers with great experiences such as his company’s new personal solutions agents.
This is the second part of a two part interview with Peter Stern. Check out yesterday’s interview, in which Stern explains why cable has a future and why it is the least expensive form of legal entertainment.
Posted by andrewkeen on Tuesday, 21 June 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

