Cult of the Amateur

My book now not only has a title and subtitle, but also a cover.

It will be called THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR: How Blogs, Wikis, Social Networking, and the Digital World are Assaulting our Economy, Culture and Values.

I love what Doubleday/Random House have done the cover of the book. It shouts out, in the most electric of oranges, the imminence of the cultural and economic crisis engendered by the digital revolution. There's not much time left, that symbolic hourglass suggests, until our whole culture is swept away by the dire consequences of Web 2.0 egalitarianism.

Assault! the cover warns. Assault, assault, assault!!!

For more on this assault, my debate with Chris Anderson  author of the Long Tail was both published and broadcast in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle.

I have the highest respect for Chris. I think he's done a brilliant job recalibrating Wired's message and his Long Tail is an extremely smart and elegant argument that is revitalizing mainstream media's interest in technology.

The only problem is that he's wrong. He's wrong that we are on the verge of a cultural renaisssance. He's wrong that the digital revolution will provide people with more viable avenues to become professional writers, musicians and film-makers. Most importantly, he's wrong that amateurism benefits mankind.

As I will show in my Cult of the Amateur, we are teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Blogs, wikis and social networking are, indeed, assaulting our economy, our culture and our values. Web 2.0 is pushing us back into the Dark Ages.

That's a big deal. It's a message that needs to shouted from every available soapbox -- even from a loathsome blog like this. It deserves to be broadcast in the most electric of oranges.

Comments

[Bine]

Congratulations, Andrew! This is wonderful - I love the cover and can't wait to get the book!

[Patrick]

Can't wait to read it, when is it out?

[andrew Keen]

Patrick -- April 07

ak

[Marcelo]

Andrew, I'm really looking forward to this book. You've hovered around this subject for a while now, and I'm curious to see it all summed ( even if only to a degree ) up together.

I'm rather surprised to note that Mr. "news scripting" hasn't trounced up and down about this like a 3 year old having a fit. Since, after all, it seems continuously for the past few years it's been his raison d'etre.

Curiously enough, even though we know that for some the fascia of altruistic communication is their "best face forward", most independently thinking people really do realize that the rationale behind O'Reilly and Comp. ( Tim, not Bill ) current claim to fame is about the Ka-Ching. Whatever vehicle gets people to buy books that aren't about the animals on the cover. I've oft wondered how much of that enterprises income goes towards the preservation of any of the species so well illustrated on the covers of their books. But I digress.

The plain and simple truth about it is that the box.nets, the meebos, and the "I haven't got a clue how or what to name it but if I put two weird sounding syllables together people will come" companies out there are "all about the Benjamins". At the surface, there's nothing specifically wrong with that. I love free enterprise and an ample amount of sheckels in everyone's pocket never hurts. Those companies are no different than the Flickr's, the YouTube's ( GooTube ? ), other than someone with more sackfuls of investor-inflated stock options haven't tried to buy them out yet.

Like you said in your post about Yo!Rangstah!, it's easy to get seduced by the allure of what Web 2.0 SAYS it's promising you, "egalitopia". One of my kids is reading Animal Farm for school at the moment, and so I end this comment with a reminder crafted from one of the "aha !" points in the story.

The first mistake everyone makes
in embracing Web 2.0 is NOT realizing that Web 2.0 IS NOT about espousing "egalitarian principles". What I've always taken away from most blogs by the "Technorat-i" crowd is a sense of how "more equal" (they believe) they are, than those who congregate around them to listen to what they have to say, or what they did this week.

Present company excluded.

[MLM]

I'm looking forward to reading your book. I work in a web shop for a large company while maintaining a second career in liberal arts academia. The company is eagerly redesigning applications using Web 2.0 technologies and principles. These revisions have been bringing great improvements for practical web transactions. There is nothing really egalitarian about it - rich internet applilcations make the web easier to navigate and can save time.
Now, in the other world, I have found that the direction the web has been taking (with wikis and self-publishing) has become a major nuisance for academic writers and educators. I've had an article published online (in an academic peer-reviewed source) lifted nearly verbatum and dumped into a self-published lulu book by someone who I think (innocently?) simply doesn't know the difference between wikipedia and copyrighted sources. It seems that in over 600 pages, only a few words were his own! This lack of education and respect for expertise seems to be at the heart of the problem.

[john]

relying on "mainstream" lies got us into the iraq war. Did david rockefeller pay you to write this trash. Why is it allways a foreigner that sticks their nose where they ought not. We know why you wrote this.How much are they paying you to help corporatize our last avenue of free speech lackey pig.

[Sandra Galligan (Padjan maiden)]

I am an Australian who is currently fighting art theft over the internet. I am currently in litigation but need more help. Email me at art.avengers@yahoo.com

http://www.myspace.com/ArtAvengers

http://www.ArtAvengers.com

Sandra Galligan

[Nemesis]

Sandra Padjan is dishonest and unethical. She and her company both PROMOTE art theft. View our site for more information and evidential support of our claim:

http://www.myspace.com/JusticeVengeance

[Mister Jensen]

Emergence d’une nouvelle culture dans et par le web 2.0 bien entendu; comme toute réalisation humaine, il y a le meilleur et le pire, sachons garder notre esprit critique et notre âme si celà est encore possible !

La raison n'est pas autre chose qu'une part de l'esprit divin plongée dans le corps des hommes.
Sénèque, Ep., 66, 12.

Mister Jensen - FRANCE
http://midi-chez-meleagre.blogspot.com/

[Peter Kruger]

Hi,
I appreciate that you wrote this book and appeared on TV to talk about it. For some reason, after wating an interview, i have not been able to stop thinking about the argument in your book. Here are my thoughts, thanks for taking the time to read the feelings of an Amateur.

The Internet is the greatest equalizer. Traditional, already-established artists may be up in arms about it, but the internet is allowing for a cultural darwinism at a level never before reached. True artists create content as a form of expression. Millions of hopeful artists have found the web as a great place to distribute their work. As a result, new styles and genres are being spead faster, and over greater distances than ever before. People are becoming more creative and there has been a dramatic rise in collaboration. All of this points to the internet being a positive thing.
You argue that the internet is killing the arts. I disagree; I think the Internet is allowing the arts to flourish. The only thing that id potentially hurt are the revenue streams. So a lot of artists, you say, are losing money needed to pay rent. Unfortunately, we live in a free market economy, and the same goes for the interent. If people can find what they percieve to be better art on the internet, and for cheaper (or even free), why wouldnt they put their attention, and possibly money, towards that. Its all about products. At the end of the day, the people with the best product normally win.

I think you're scared. I think, that after realizing and fully understanding what power the Internet has, you are scared. You have realized that there are hundreds of thousands of people just as smart as you are, and they all give their intellectual findings out for free. You are a self-proclaimed elitest, and that is not a good thing in this day and age. It is that attitude that has caused the political problems we see today. You are promoting an Us vs. Them mentality when you should be embracing the Us mentality. If you are concerned about the future and want to make things better for artists, then realize that it will be achieved when established people like you, and unknown people like me, begin to work together in an effort to improve the situation for everyone.

I like to give money to artists. I pay for all of my downloads. I comment on blogs, submit news articles, post my own photography work, and I take advantage of all the other things the web has to offer. Apparently, i am your enemy as a result. I have a voice and I have a need for expression. No amount of complaining about "amateurs" will deter me from expressing myself. You, as an elitest have two options. Work together with the "amateurs" and co-collaborate, or become obsolete. The word has changed: Are you going to trailblazer and lead a new direction, or are you going to slowly wither away in stagnation? We want to work together and collaborate, thats why we got on here in the first place. So I will extend this invitation to you: Will you join us? We hope you do.

Sincerely,
Peter Kruger, an Amatuer in everything but Market Analytics (the 9-to-5)

[Miriam]

It is a threat to the established order (or so they like to imagine themselves) who used the rape of Europe in two world wars to position themselves at the top of the social pecking order. These include Jews, Christians and Muslims - mostly of an autocratic persuasion. They dream of a world of monopolies, of compliant populations who will bend to their every whim, of a culture which requires a large number of serfs who are excluded from it (how can you feel civilized if you don't have oppressed, uneducated grunts to compare yourself to and laugh at?). At all costs, to maintain this, they cannot abide the idea of the serfs waking up and deciding to do things differently. It's as stupid a vision of the world as Communism and it will never work either, only because poverty and oppression will always cause people to give up. The internet has been a godsend to the 'little people'. We can sell our stuff more easily without wheedling to the more financially powerful, we can find other people who have the same interests in things like folk music which the 'cultured' have always derided anyway (for instance, check out Gypsy music on Youtube and Myspace). It isn't really the death of the culture of the more powerful because they still have most of the money - it's just that they're terrified we won't care about what they think we should. We know they are pathological liars and will never stop trying to find ways to make us beholden to them.

[jschang]

we are a larger consciousness just gaining the capacity genuine self-awareness and the internet is the enabling factor. you would stifle these voices and deny us an accurate portrayal of our own collective mind? you would deny the very first possibility of genuinely getting to know ourselves? consider this internet as the axon and the space between screen and viewer as the synaptic chasm and the viewer's mind as neuron. at the risk of sounding like a wacko, i welcome hive mind and we shall be in one accord. =)

how does the chatter of the blogosphere degrade our perception professional journalism? has it really done any more than professional journalism does to itself?

trust a free market...the cream will rise to the top. the internet is the ultimate darwinian struggle for survival.

the internet is our voice. liken it to an internal monologue, of sorts.

[jschang]

you're just jaded cause it hasn't happened as fast as you had expected. it's like meeting a person who hasn't really had anyone to talk to in years. they babble on incessantly for a while, then they calm down and start getting rational. give it time. two years isn't enough. =)

[Dale Collins]

Well, sir, the internet and its blogs might be a blot on the horizon of such places as LONDON, NEW YORK, AND PARIS, but I live in the "other America," rural South Carolina. Without the internet, we would know almost NOTHING about alternative news sources, and the blogs certainly do their part. So, people in places with gigantic bookstores and media-savvy cafe sitters, shut the hell up!

[SE.Berrais]

I quietly agree what Mr Andrew see and say. I live in Algeria and I think so: The Internet is changing not only our life mode but even our conceptions. I think that it true to try enlighting people against this new born.

[Terry]

I have two words for why the "culture of the amateur" makes sense: teacher's college. From many people I've talked to, and probably verifiable by statistics, professors of Education are often lousy teachers. How can this be? By definition, they are the "experts" in education, and thus should be the BEST teachers anywhere. On the other hand, some other professors, who have NO training in education whatsoever, get prestigious teaching awards. They are, by definition, "amateurs" in teaching. The fact is that there are many areas where supposed experts are not very good at what they do, but still expect to be taken as authorities in their field, while many others who have no special "credentials" are far more competent regardless. The world of the internet just allows information to be judged on its merit, rather than on the supposed "qualifications" of its source. To paraphrase, "On the Internet, no-one knows (or cares) if you're SUPPOSED to be an expert."

[JohnT]

I'm thrilled that I have the opportunity to comment about this book on the author's very own blog. :D

C'mon, Andrew, stop eating where you shit! ;)

[Javier Bracamonte]

Congratulations Andrew!! Is there an spanish translation?? or a project, at least...

Regards from Mexico.

[Kimberly Castanon]

I've read this book 3 times and I love it! I finally finished editing an old essay entitled "Kill Your Computer" - not that I don't love my Mac but really, some people need to step away from the screen. This book reminded me of Baudrillard, another all time favorite. In a sense, nothing on the internet is real, without power it does not exist. So now people have to be plugged in, wired in or whatever else 24/7 to stay "connected." I've seen how people react when there is no signal, outlet, or POWER, to update their profile or upload photos they took ten minutes ago and they go insane and it's sad.
Anywho, I think this book is brilliant and I hope there will be a part II to follow up on this cult of online identities and such.

[Gossip]

I disagree with this philosophy! Web 2.0 is NOT something to look at negatively. It's about democracy: you should be able to see that.

[Joao Marques Varela]

Responsability is freedom´s inconvenient conscience.

I wonder if all the supporters of the "Web 2.0 which is NOT something to look at negatively" and is "about democracy" are actually able to see that some people still struggle to get bread to eat and that in "a free market...the cream will (not always) rise to the top"?
Are they ready to take the responsability to try to make the world a better place (a dream as old as humanity itself)?
Are they ready to REALLY expose themselves ?(for example, a doctor treating a child for a heart condition is exposed due to his responsability)
Are YOU ?

Joao Marques Varela
Portugal

[Kimberly Castanon]

It's not necessarily that Web 2.0 is negative - it is that it CAN be. People need to be taught carefully, not just believe what someone read on a blog. Again, a huge population of people may agree on something, but it does not mean that they are right, that is not collective intelligence, it's more like collective ignorance.

[Kris]

I haven't read the book yet but was looking up more info about it today when I came across your site.

To be honest, I don't think it's the bloggers and the YouTubers we need to be scared of. Amateurs have always created their own entertainment, and in the process some of them become professionals (there are folks who started online comics for fun but now live off those same comics). People will always get a kick out of amateur entertainment, but most of them aren't willing to pay for it unless it's really truly GOOD. People still pay for mass media entertainment even though a lot of it is trash, substantially worse in quality than the best amateur stuff out there.

Amateurs aren't killing mass media--it's killing itself. Amateurs are just stepping in to fill the void.

[Molly]

I've just begun reading the book and while it's not comforting, it's doing a great job of helping me understand my 'felt difficulty' with a number of aspects of today's culture. Good to know it's not just me. Fine writing, thoughtful analysis.

Thank you.

[craig walters]

heard you this morning on RTE1 with Pat Kenny re; Obama v McCain ...you were 100% right if sounding a little tiresome of it all :)