Me and David Hockney -- married at last

I've finally made it. I've joined David Hockney's exclusive crowd. According to Peter Griffin in the New Zealand Herald newspaper, iconic pop artist Hockney and I are both "cranky old men". Apparently Hockney went off against the iPod blaming it for the "decline in visual awareness." Then there's me, blaming Web 2.0 for the decline in western civ. Here's Griffin on me and Dave:

Are the iPod and the Web 2.0 eroding culture or are Keen and Hockney just cranky old men who can't relate to the multimedia-obsessed, user-generated, mashed-up digital world we now live in?

Now I'm waiting for somebody to compare me to another cranky old man -- George Lucas. Poor old George can't relate to the mashed-up world either. Here's what Lucas said at the D conference about the difference between YouTube voyeurism and real movies:

What do you think of Internet video? Lucas says there are two forms of entertainment: circus and art. Circus is random, he says: “feeding Christians to the lions”–or, he says, as the term in Hollywood goes–”throw a puppy on the highway. … You don’t have to write anything or really do anything. It’s voyeuristic.” In short, he says, it’s YouTube. Art is not random, Lucas says. “It’s storytelling. It’s insightful. It’s amusing.”

In other, non cranky news, I had a fun interview on NPR's Saturday Weekend Edition. My interview with Moira Gunn on NPR's Tech Nation is live, as is my appearance on CNN International. Also, see Loren Feldman's glittering debut on the Huffington Post in which the mensch plugs CULT.

And for those of you who want to see five cranky old men in action tomorrow (Tues) night, please come to a debate at Campbell's Barnes and Noble bookstore (near San Jose) featuring Nick Carr, Steve Gilmor, Keith Teare, Dan Farber and myself. This Deathmatch 2007 kicks off at 7.00 and promises to be more circus than art. Actually, Farber, Gilmor and Teare might be old, but they aren't cranky. And Carr seems to be emancipating himself of his crankiness. So it will be four old men and one crank. I just hope they don't throw me on the highway and then put the movie up on YouTube.

Comments

[Mike Donovan]

Andrew,

I finished THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR last night. Wow. I keep a reading journal of all books I read and I wrote, "Most thought-provoking non-fiction book I have read in years...A+" It was truly an impressive piece of work and a wake-up call that must be heard.

I plan to recommend the book whenever I can. The nifty first chapter preview on this site is an excellent idea, you can't read that first chapter and not want more. I plan on sending a few here for that 'taste'.

Great job, Andrew.

Mike Donovan

[Andrew Keen]

Hi Mike -- who paid you to write such a biased review?

seriously, many thanks. Delighted you found it provocative.

ak

[Jeff Maus]

Mr. Keen,

I listened to your interview on Weekend Edition last Saturday, and I must say that your words are no different than 90 % of the blow hard bloggers posting on the Internet. What is wrong with being an amateur?

Surely, someone as "professional" as yourself has heard the terms "one should always be a beginner at something", or "beginners mind"? Probably way to zen for a pro like you. The Internet is a beginning, and by no means even close to it's zenith, or close to being perfect, it, like life is an experiment. I cannot understand why anyone would criticize an environment that encourages the use of brain power and understanding, especially in this Wal-Mart day in age. There are many people professing many things on the Internet, some of it false, some of it myopic and some of it just plain silly. But we all must use our ability to discriminate against the false and suspect from the information that we seek, just like we must discriminate against the false and suspect information that is passed off as knowledge at your precious colleges and universities. The very same institutions that create and uphold your "professional" credentials. In my mind sir, it is you, the single minded, self absorbed, arrogant, blathering professionals that have leached the passion out of life and being human. I for one, am proud to listen and learn from my fellow "amateurs, I find their lack of certainty comforting.

Don't be scared, Jeff Maus

[Dj Lightning]

Hi there, I'm a french pussy and riding on this crazy horse that is my pc connected to the international world.wide.war since 1997 ...

I didn't read your book but I read some stuff in here and I think your lightness is an entertainment in this world of mini-amateur-terrorist bloggers who want to dominate an uncontrolable world ...

So I agree with your concept, but I'm not fatalist, we have to rise the level that's all folks see you :)

[Joseph]

Jeff,

If you really wanna find the root of why this pompous ass is writing what he's writing, you'd have to look towards the political establishment that increasingly thinks bloggers are a serious strategic threat to its scheming abilities... The establishment has long time ago neutralized what comes out of Hollywood and the major media networks... This bloody internet 2.0 thing wasn't at all expected to happen this way, and they just would love to curtail that "Internets" once and for all but can't seem to find a way fast enough! Mr. self declared prophet of sociology here is very professional, I believe him! He's a professional mental prostitute of the establishment...

Mr. AK

I say, since 2.0 is not your thing, why don't you get out of it and stop blogging for a change, you're annoying! You waste half hour of my time every month, as I find myself compelled to read some of your stuff and bash you.

Warmest regards

Joseph

[snabby]

Mr. Keen:

I heard your Weekend Edition interview, and have a question. When you were asked about the notion of cultural gatekeepers protecting entrenched interested, you said "That is a neo-Marxist argument."

What specifically do you mean by that statement? Do you believe that the suggestion that at least part of the role of such gatekeepers is to protect the interests of the powerful is not plausible?

Thanks.

[WL]

You have to laugh at George Lucas opining on storytelling, given how badly he does it himself. He thinks poorly of Internet videos? George, my dear, I think poorly of Internet videos *and* those dreadful myth/Saturday-morning-serial mash-ups that you've been passing off as art since 1977.

[Chris Cain]

Hey Andrew,

I apologize for not reading your book yet, but happened to read an
article about it online the other day and thought I would check out
your site. I am not a blogger and I think Myspace is the saddest think to
happen to the Internet. In parts I may agree with some of your views,
but it made me kind wonder if any of the largest corporations in the
country contributed to your funding. I also wonder what you think can
be done, maybe you answer this in your book, but I seriously hope your not
one of the people that is proposing Government intervention because if
that is the case then we are really going to have problems. No company
or Government has any right to control the Internet or the marketplace
I do have to say. First of all, I believe the Internet free's a normal
Democracy from the holds of large multitnational corporations
momentarily so that small companies such as Amazon, Ebay, Google, can
join the marketplace against such companies as Barnes and Noble,
Microsoft and Time Warner who all have tried to monopolize the system
already. Some of these same organizations have also controlled and
still
control our elections, the major reason for a Democracy. The Internet
has also many good and bad qualities (like any marketplace) and means
that people(businesses) need to be more creative and work harder in how
they control their products and do business, such as (filesharing),
I-Tunes answered that, television will soon be all online I believe
which means people will be able to watch what they want and have more
options instead of buying some crappy television subscription that has
nothing I want to watch and has been the same for my whole life.
Watching movies and sharing them for free should not be a crime, what
should be a crime is going to the movies paying $10 to get in, then
paying another $10 for popcorn and soda that costs $1 to make. hmmm
..if I was in the movies I think I would know how to answer to file sharers
and give some motivation to go to the movies Beer and Dinner at a
reasonable price. I would go to the movies every week. Blogging may
give misinformation to people, but its like anything else, if people find
out the information is wrong then they will cease to blog in that location
again just like any competitive news sources on TV, hmmm ever heard of
FOXnews or CNN, used to be my favorite channels until I noticed they
were spinning the truth. The Internet may be havens to amateurs as you
see it, but large record companies that can pay artists to work full
time also tell these artists what they can and cannot write, this to me
takes away any creativity you think is lacking in amateur music. I
assume you also think Independent rock labels have no creativity as
well since they include amateurs too? I sure hope not since they create the
trends as do normal people which is the way it should be. I think I may
buy your book but I hope the money doesn't go toward any effort to
limit what the Internet can do because if that were the case then we would
surely become a Communist state.

Chris

[Steve]

Andrew,

After my post of last night trashing you, I thought perhaps I might come back and instead of merely venting anger, actually try to convince you that you are wrong. Don't get me wrong. I have no intention of being either conciliatory or "nice". Your attack on the work and contributions of amateurs strikes me very personally, as I am one of those people and aspire to become good at it. It appears to offend you that I, who you seem to regard as your inferior, am enabled to have a forum for my views. Very well, I in turn am deeply offended and personally threatened that you devalue my actual or potential contributions and propose to deny me that forum.

But I do intend to address your core argument more directly.

I take the overall thrust of your book to be that the contributions of "amateurs" (i.e. the uncredentialed) are of little or no value to society, and that the Internet is a bad thing because it affords these, your inferiors, the opportunity of an audience.

I think it is not coincidental that you are from Britain. Your homeland has a long tradition of accepting the validity of class heirarchies as a social good. Even today, in the twenty-first century England has a Monarch! Not to mention a panoply of Dukes, Counts, Knights, nobles and the like. Is it still a custom in the "public" schools (which here we would term "private" or perhaps "prep") that the upperclassmen are informally permitted to sodomize the underclassmen? This custom alone is telling.

I believe I read something of yours suggesting that "elitism" has become an undefined term of opprobrium, similar to "facist" in the time of Orwell whom you quote. To the contrary. Elitism is not at all undefined. It has the clear and simple meaning of thinking you (and, presumably, yours) are better than other people, and, perhaps, that this state of affairs should be reflected in social arrangements that reward you for that.

And this clearly appears to be the view of things you espouse in your work.

But let's look at the facts. I will stipulate that there are large numbers of minimally talented amateurs who post a huge amount of unmitigated crap on the Internet. However, I don't think that proves your point. The thing you overlook, which is an anomaly that simply cannot be accounted for by your views, is the abundance of high quality content, freely given, often by those who are knowledgable in their fields (whether or not credentialed). As one astronomer wag is supposed to have said when trying to fit the existence of Earth's moon into the then current theories of planetary formation. "It should not exist. But it does".

I'll just point you to a very few examples out of many

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html

This is the most usable source I have ever seen for answering obscure questions of international postal addressing, which is something I have to deal with occasionally in the course of my work. You may be amused to read his discussion of postal addressing in England, which arguably has some of the world's most confusing postal addresses.

http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html

One of many good free HTML tutorials available on the Web.

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/Johannes_Helmig/

Windowsnetworking.com has a wealth of useful articles that have helped me solve practical problems in my workplace. The articles of Dr. Helmig have been most consistently helpful.

This is a pretty good selection. The first is a rank amateur, but extremely knowledgable for all that. The second is a working developer, though I don't know if he has credentials - it is not a regulated profession. The third is a highly credentialed professional who nonetheless chooses to give away his knowledge for free.

And, one more interesting example. A while back I was at a "neuroscience for kids" site located at the url below:

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html

This site is run by Dr. Eric Chudler, a credentialed professional. It mostly features Q & A from children, but the occasional older student or adult sometimes weighs in, so I was bold to ask the following:

"I'm wondering if there is any kind of well organized reference, suitable for laypeople, that catalogs the various neurotransmitters and gives basic information about the function of each of them. I know this is a rapidly evolving field, so I wouldn't expect anything exhaustive, but maybe something that would cover the ones that are well-studied.

"It would be preferable if there is a resource that could be found online."

Dr. Chudler graciously emailed me back with suggestions. To your presumed chagrin, one of the references recommended by this credentialed professional was....Wikipedia!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitters#Common_neurotransmitters

I went there and found the article to be well organized and thorough. And I doubt Dr. CHudler would have recommended it had it not been accurate.

Sure, theres a LOT of crap on Wikipedia - and the politics involved in articles on controversial issues is nothing short of abominable. Plus, their avowed and explicit prefence for verifiability over truthfulness is morally repugnant. But for all that, when they are good they can be quite good.

I guess here's the bottom line. At the end of the day people need to become skilled at separating out the crap from the good stuff. This necessity occurs in all walks of life, and arguably predates the Internet by several thousand years. It is a consideration in meeting people face-to-face, in evaluating competing views presented in the tradional media, in doing library research, and in deleting the spam from your inbox every morning. The good news is that most people eventually get at least tolerably good at it. Civilization has survived liars and con-men in every generation. It will survive them on the Internet.

We of the lower classes should probably appreciate the willingness of our betters to play the parental role, protecting us from intellectual predators, and gently but firmly guiding us away from the dangerous temptations to become predators in our own right. But I fear we must decline your generous offer. We are free men and women and justifiably proud of it.

We, in America, are decendants of those who bravely threw off the yoke of Empire and went so far in pursuit of republican ideals as to prohibit our government from granting titles of nobility. It is in our Constitution. And perhaps I might quote another of our nation's founding documents. "We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...".

Or 87 years later, from a man who grew up on the frontier, in harsh conditions, and with no aristocratic connections or family background rose to become this nations President in our hour of greatest crisis:

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continebt a new nation - conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war - testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure...."

True now as then.

You might have done well to study our history before you chose to emigrate. Your viewpoint will be a "hard sell" here. Perhaps China, Singapore, or certain of the Islamic nations might be more congenial to your views.

Yours adversarily,
-Steve

P.S. I almst forgot. If the collaborative model sucks as bad as you say, why is it that most web servers run on Linux, Apache, MySql and Php ("LAMP"). This is all open source collaboratively developed software. If that was bad, wouldn't all the servers not running the competing Microsoft products have gone dark by now?

As they say on the streets. "Check yourself before you wreck yourself".

[Eric Gauvin]

I loved the interview with the rabbits. Scoble certainly came off as a total space case.

[Bill]

It bothers me that you would be thought of as a cranky old man. A cranky man, maybe ... but old? That worries me because from the pictures of you I suspect you're quite a bit younger than me. Does that mean I'm a cranky fossil? Very unsettling ...

[John Brick]

Convincing evidence that your ideas are idiotic:

Chinese "amateur" journalists (see this link http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/25/1852215&from=rss)
are fighting censorship the best they can on the internet, while the "enlightened" such as youself criticize "amateur" journalism.

Yep. Let's leave journalism to the Chinese "professionals". . .otherwise known as government censors. .

Next time, think before you shoot your piehole off.

[Bob Glaza]

I find much of what you talk about makes sense and have added your book to my reading list. I hope sales are good?

[Guillame]

The essay presents a different view that the one Andrew Keen discussed in his book "The Cult of the Amateur". He argues that the internet is becoming a threat to our culture and specifically that new user-generated content could threaten the existence of the media as we know them and that it would be a bad thing. I, however see the future of culture differently and do not think that the internet, even with so much worthless content, is about to bring such a cultural dark-age. Quite on the opposite, I see the internet as becoming a force that could bring the most valuable culture to more people than ever, though not everybody.

About the current state of the internet

Concerning the lack of civility on the internet

First let me point the fact that I agree with Andrew Keen that the internet can sometimes be a pretty nasty place. Not everywhere but in many places it unfortunately is. Andrew Keen claims that the quasi anonymity people enjoy online, is to blame for this. It is partly true but not the main reason in my opinion.

There used to be a time when, in spite of anonymity, the internet was a pretty nice place. It was a time when the main users were academics, technophiles and such. Everything was not rose but, as an example, usenet was then a great place of debate. The system was working : there was no spam, trolling was limited : discussion on these mostly unmoderated forums was possible.

Then AOL came and all hell broke loose: AOL brought the masses to the internet. Since then the internet has kept democratizing for good and worse.

Anonymity alone is not a reason alone for bad behavior. I know I personally never flamed or insulted anyone on the internet and I am sure most people don't go flaming other users for no reason. But there are some bad apples that I supposed have a predisposition for misbehavior and so does as such.

It baffles me as to why that is but I suppose the reasons could be that they lack intelligence and manners or have a psychological condition that cause them to be anti-social.

Since so many are now using the internet, the small percentage of people with antisocial tendency, are in number high enough to make the internet a bad place for the majority. Incivility is indeed very present on the net and the more popular a site, the less civil discussion are likely to be. Comments on a site such as youtube, will often contain derogatory  remarks. Go to a site publishing amateur poetry, and I supect the flaming content will be low. One of the reasons, could be that Trolls prefer high visibility site to maximize the number of people they are going to offend. Another could be that the most popular site must appeal to a large part of users.

Concerning the lack of critical thinking

Andrew Keen believes that one of the problem today is that people accept what they find on the internet as face value. It is probably true of some people, but I think it will be especially true of older people that have been brought up in the world of television.  Because a lot of people are used to accept everything the TV says as the truth, they lost their ability to think critically and challenge the information that's presented to them. The internet is no worse or better.

Of course, since anyone can edit a site, such as Wikipedia, you could say that it is likely to be less reliable than the Encyclopedia Britannica. But it does not matter : what matter is that people should learn to exercise their good judgement and think critically, it's an essential part of being a human being to be able to think for oneself. The only solution I see to this is better education.

I think that when Andrew talk about Media literacy, he really mean the ability to think critically in front of the media. If there is one culprit for today, 'media illiteracy', I would definitely blame the old media, specifically television. It's a problem on the internet but no more than anywhere else. 

The problem

The problem is in my opinion that mostly everybody uses the internet but only half of the population has an IQ above 100 (by definition) and that's the real problem. I am not suggesting that it all about intelligence, there are many other factors, such as education, cultural background, personality and such. But it is a fact that the average human being is pretty mediocre in many ways.

Andrew Keen wrote "Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys ... are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity". I like that image and you could say it is true. It is because it became so easy to publish that anybody can do it. And unfortunately everybody does.

The internet has democratized and allows everybody to participate. But if mediocrity is rampant in the general population, then it's no wonder to find the same on-line. The problem is not with the internet or with anonymity, the problem is the human being. Sure if you remove anonymity you would likely improve civility as more people would feel responsible for what they say. But you would loose something so much more important : that's the freedom of speech that the internet gives. If you are not anonymous, there are a lot of social pressure on you to think and act a certain way. Anonymity allows you to say what you really want without risk. Anonymity should stay, even if it's abused by a minority.

A Possible Future of media and culture.

New Media vs Old Media

Print

There is often a lot of debate about the future of professional journalism. Mr Keen thinks that blogger cannot replace professional journalism because they can't be trusted and don't have the resources necessary to do the job of professional journalist. At this point in time I agree especially when referring to high-quality journalism such as the WSJ.

I think that this journalism might no really be threatened in the online world. There are so many people that do not want to see that medium disappear and, at present, there just no real competition in with independent user-generated online content.

However, I think things will change but it will be the smallish local newspaper that will suffer the most : the journalists working for those small local-newspaper are often not so brilliant and resources would not be a major factor for unpaid citizen journalists to compete against them when covering local news, but then again, the software platform to allow this on a large scale does not yet exists.

Right now, the competition mainly comes from individual blogs written by a single person. This content is often accessed through social news website such as digg.com. I agree that digg.com is often  terrible. Interesting submissions do crop up here and there but it's for the main part full of trivia, disorganized, easy to game : it can't be trusted. I think digg.com was interesting in showing that the wisdom of the crowd mentality is no replacement for an editorial staff.

It is easy to understand why : a voting system will only favor story that the group agree with. Plus ten idiots don't make an expert. Newspaper editors are chosen for their ability to make good choices about what story should run or not. Still I think there is a place for a new model of quality news creation that could be trusted in the digital age. The internet is about giving power to the individuals.

I see a future when online citizen journalism will get organized. You mentioned the pareto principle, but it does not only apply to quantity but also to quality : 20% will create 80% of good contents. Just as some people are writing journalistic blog articles today, I believe we will see a new class of actors that will replace the editors of the print newspaper. People will consume their news through the eyes of those editors. News consumers will choose which aggregation of news they consume according to their preferences and political opinions just as today people choose to read such or such newspapers according to their preferences.

This new media site will not be entirely altruistic and I suspect the work of the most popular editors will allow them to earn substantial revenue. Just as people today will pay for quality news, they will in the future. A new economy will be created around this : article writer will be paid by the editorial management and organized groups will be set up. They will gives access to the necessary tools for the contributors to work such as access to news agency reports. International News agency will not disappear : for one thing they are subsidized by governments (at least I know that AFP is subsidized by the French government), and they will still have customers, just different ones.

I am sure you would argue that these arrangements are not going to be reliable but I think they are going to be more reliable than today's mainstream media. I can't see how anyone could dare today to argue that big corporation-controlled media can be trusted. One only has to look at Murdoch owned media to see what such arrangements produce : political bias in favor of news that benefits their owners and the political party they support : sensationalism, political propaganda, etc... Fox news would be a prime example of this : it just can't get much worse. I would argue this is even worse than the garbage produced by wisdom-of-the-crowed news such as digg.com because Fox is dangerous : it is used very effectively by the people in Power to push their political agendas.

The second element that is primordial and that will over time insure that the new media are going to be reliable is online reputation. Most everybody in this industry will be freelancers and reputation will be the most important factor regarding the value of their work. Reputation takes time to build but can be destroyed over-night and that's what is going to keep most people in-line.  I don't think this new media will be more corrupt than today's media. If someone is caught doing something unprofessional, such as accepting money for a positive article, their reputation will be destroyed and they might loose more earning potential than the kickback they accepted.

As you mentioned anonymity could present some challenge regarding trust. But regardless of who the real person life, the value of their online persona will be set by their reputation. It is irrelevant if they are writing under a pseudonym. I actually think it is the most important element if you agree that the free speech revolution that the internet has brought is important and valuable. Potential anonymity will be along low entry cost, what set this new media apart from the old ones. 

Now I believe their will be another side to reputation. Reputation is only useful for the news consumer when they actually know the reputation of the person whose trust they want to assess. How do you  assess reliability of someone, you never heard of. That's where another part of new media infrastructure will come play : the reputation database. I think we will see the emergence of services that will allow everybody to rank the level of trust they give to such or such person. This system might be based on the same technology than Google Pagerank. I can actually imagine them creating such a system : the rep-rank. The more people will rank you as trustable, the better your rep-rank will be. But not all vote will be worth the same : highly ranked users will have more weight than poorly ranked ones, in the same way than Pagerank rewards links from well ranked sites and punish people that try to game the system. It's not going to be an easy system to create, and it's not going to be perfect but would do the job just as Pagerank is good enough today: this system should allow people to look-up the rep-rank of someone and see what level of trust they are ready to give to their work. Maybe you could add a political components and limit the weight of people with a different political opinion than yourself. There is a lot of thought to put in such a system but I am sure we will come to this.

Of course, as I said before, I expect people to keep critical thinking on at all time and I believe that's the most important thing people will have to do. Today's online unreliability could actually have a benefit for the future of the internet : people today are learning not to believe everything they see on the internet.

Right now nobody cares about bloggers : the old-media is not dead yet. But when it is dying I believe it will be replaced by such a system. It will be a two-level system : those who write and those who choose what gets read. They are the only roles that are necessary : the rest of the news industry will become irrelevant.

Video and Audio

We today are now seeing a lot of new video and audio contents created for internet distribution created by individuals and small groups.
Creation of quality content is becoming technically dirt cheap to produce : you can get an HD video camera for as little as 1000 dollars now, and only a home computer and some skills is then needed to produce video. It is the same story : a lot of this amateur created content is crap but it does not matter : good content is also produced. I can think of many quality video podcast that I would rather watch than most tv-show that we see today. Check out things like the Merlin Show with Merlin Mann or Ze Frank for exemple. It's well produced and it's independent.  I don't care if Youtube is full of Star Wars Kid or Numa Numa Guy videos : their existence is not harmful to quality shows. People watch what they want to watch and it's a fact that a lot of people are not very interested in culture. Look at what is aired on TV nowadays : it is full of dreadful obscene reality show. TV has become a lot of trash. What is the cultural value in program such as The Jerry Springer Show ? Yet it is popular with a segment of the population or it would not exist.

The internet is not a magic bullet that is going to make people more intelligent overnight : since everyone is now on the net, it's no surprise you will find popular worthless content.

The role of Youtube in this, is to allow easy distribution of independent producers. I don't think it will have a large importance as a media : it's the distribution platform. The featured content chosen by Youtube staff is irrelevant as people will find what they want either by searching for it, or they will be directed to it from other sources : the community sites they frequent and such. As such I find Youtube extremely valuable as it gives you the opportunity to get your content out. Sure you will find amateurish content on Youtube but you will also find interesting and well produced content.

About Culture

Popular culture vs High culture - the Elite vs the Masses

First I would like to say a word about the difference in what I call High culture and Popular/Low Culture. I call High culture, the cultural artifacts that have high artistic, spiritual and intellectual value. Literature, Serious Music, especially so-called Classical music, Graphical Arts, Art Cinema and such.

Low Culture is the rest. This distinction I make is of course artificial and there is a lot of overlap between the two (more and more actually). A band like the Beatles started as a popular band and they remain popular but at the same time, they have gain a status that put their music in the highest level of Popular culture. I call Low culture, the culture of the people, High culture, the culture of the elite. Actually, for the purpose of this discussion, you can choose to put the limit between the two type where you want. It's just a way to separate the content one's value, to the content one's does not.

However, it is still useful to make the distinction because it allows us to see something clear : High culture has been more and more accessible over time. In the middle ages, there was no overlap between the culture of the people and the culture of the Elite. Literacy was for a long long time, a privilege of the ruling class. With time more and more people had access to an increasingly large amount of high culture.

The librarian might be worried that less people appear to be reading books but that's because of the increasing competition of the new media : TV, Internet, Video Games. The average person has less time to read than ever. However, I don't think there is a real crisis : I am convinced that more people read what matters. I am convinced that more people than ever, read books I would put in the High culture classification. It's the people who used to read the cheap pulp entertainment who stopped reading : they now watch movies and TV.

I don't have data to support this claim but I believe that a higher percentage of the population than ever has access and is able to enjoy the product of High culture. It's a trend that's been pretty obvious when you look at the history of literacy and education. If it was true that less people were interested in High culture than say the previous generation, I would definitely blame the quality of public education : not TV, not video games and certainly not the internet.

On the opposite, I think the internet has a role in making High culture accessible to more people than ever.

High culture has been mainly enjoyed by the few because it is more demanding and require an intellectual investment. Most people will continue to ignore it but I think what matters is that more and more people continue to have access to high culture.

Now I was not, trying to say that Popular culture is worthless, there is a lot of good things in popular culture and there is a lot of overlap, I'm just saying that the Elite will be the people that can enjoy both. What trash the masses are consuming is irrelevant as long as it does not preclude the existence of quality contents. Basically I don't care if 80% of video on Youtube are worthless as long as the other 20% is. 

Creative Writing

There is not many things to say about the future of digital media and creative writing. I think no-one argues that books are in any danger of disappearing and people have been writing books even if the financial rewards are limited. The internet has not changed anything : it's just a way to promote and distribute your work. Editors are not going away either since unlike other media, personal computers have not made book production much cheaper: you still need highly specialized skills and hardware.

The internet is not going to impact Creative writer negatively.

Movies/TV

TV and movies will not change, only the distribution model. I think we are going to enter an age where video on demand is king. "TV" series and show will still be produced but the distribution will be radically different. You'll buy your shows on Itunes and watch it when you want. The only challenge that the internet is putting on Movies and TV production is control of their content: Issues with piracy and DRM. As distasteful as I find it, I guess DRM will stay for online video : it will replace the video rental business. The content with DRM will be cheap and will expire after you watched it. DRM for non-rental purchase will have to go if studios want to combat piracy. As long as the pirated product has more value than the one you have to pay for, it's useless to fight it. Just as the music industry is slowly starting to realize it, movies and tv producers should realize it too one day or another.

Amateur content is in no way in competition with professionally produced movies and TV series and will not destroy this industry. We are seeing however, the emergence of quality new internet only shows that will are competing with some TV show. You can note for example the production of Revision3.

Music

Now that's a very interesting topic. This industry will change beyond recognition due to the internet.

The status of the musician in the 20th century has been an anomaly. Music is as old as mankind, and so it is fair to assume that there was always musicians in human societies. The advent of mass media has transformed their status : the successful one have been transformed into icons adored by millions thanks to the Recording Industry.

When you look at the musical output of the 20th century, we can see that it's is very unequal in quality. We have seen a lot of groundbreaking artists and new musical genres, especially in popular music some of which has become very interesting. A lot of this artists have been promoted by the Recording Industry. It is somehow true that we owe to the recording industry the existence of a lot of music, such as the Beattles. I however don't think they are needed anymore. 

We saw this golden age of popular music because the 20th century has been in general a century of incredible progress and intellectual development. What the recording industry did, was to allow for an incredible flow of ideas. The Recording industry has allowed the production of many artists, some bad, some good. It did and does not matter to them as long as them make money. They created a new market : they were needed because musicians could not reach many people without recordings and it was technically impossible to produce and market a recording without the recording industry's help.

But this also had a perverse effect : Mass distribution and marketing have made millionaires of many artists and the recording industry.  Money became a strong incentive for many people to try to enter the business. Music became a business instead of an art. The problem is that the places are limited. The recording industry could not sign every bands. It is also clear when looking at the amount of pretty good indie bands, that the Recording Industry has no interest in looking for real talent to promote. It is only interested in looking for marketable people. And because of the extremely profitable 10-20 years-old market when people are very influenced by peer pressure, the Recording Industry has no problem promoting such trash as Boys Band or other Britney Spears.

They do not promote creativity much but mainsteramness. It is no wonder their profit are plummeting but it is not because of piracy like they claim, it's because they have little to offer nowadays. I personally have not bought a CD that's not classical music for years because I can live off my collection of pop music.

The internet will, I hope, put an end to this abnormal situation where a small fraction of musicians, have to be obscenely rich. Unlike production of movies, recording technology has become increasingly cheap and accessible to the point where a band can easily produce an album independently. The internet, will allow them to remove the middle man that's used to be a necessary evil.

Talent has nothing to do with the recording industry. There are many musician with a lot of potential. Being signed by the Recording Industry was a way to develop your potential since only through them you could make a decent living off your music : the pool of money the consumers were ready to spend on music was split between a small group of artists. Now there will be more musicians who will be able to make a living of their art by promoting their music and their band through the power of the internet. Of course competition will be harsh, since entry cost is low. That means that it is likely that the time when musician could become obscenely rich will be over but I believe it to be a good thing. I rather see more people be able to make a decent living thanks to their music than a few getting immensely rich at the expense of all the others. Talent will really be the factor that will differentiate between success or failure.

I think the music business is set to be radically transformed. The Recording Industry will mostly disappear when their copyrights on 20th century music run out. I believe it's a good thing.

Photographs

I included photography in this essay even if it's far less prominent than other media, because it's in a special situation : professional photography is already about to die. The advent of the internet started it but unlike others media, it's the publishing industry that is killing the profession.

Amateur photographs have existed for a long time and quite a few are quite good. Now that more and more are displaying their works online, the publishing industry has started to turn to amateur to get their photographs and less and less from professional photographers. They often don't even have to pay for this pictures as the amateur is often happy to see his pictures in print.

The advent of ubiquitous camera-embedded cell phone even makes photo reporters irrelevant. Sure the picture are not as goods, but it does not matter to the publishing industry : it's cheap and it gives a feeling of authenticity.

So yes, there's a victim here: amateurs photographers on the internet are indirectly killing professional photography.

In summary, yes a lot of user generated content on the internet might be mediocre, but I do not think that it's going to destroy culture. Regular newspapers are not immedialtely at risk but I think news reporting can be adapted on the internet to be as good and possibly even better online, in the future, and I think in fact the same people, the journalists, will likely be the actors of the new medium. The others media will adapt but creation and culture is safe. If existence of mediocrity had prevented progress, the human specie would still be living in caves. Mediocre content will always be produced, possibly consumed and quickly forgotten. I feel cultural progress is safe.

[robasse]

Where are the limit of amateurism ?
Pro journalist look foolish comparing to certain amateurs ...
I ruined your day I know

[Joseph]

Hey Andrew
You're an amateur intellectual but you're so lousy that you're not even a threat to culture! sucks to be you I know!

[Eben Carlson]

I hate to offer such a simple solution to such an enjoyable problem, but removing fixed prices from all content would allow and encourage the creation of highly sophisticated, intimate, meaningful, and fun mass cultures around any number of shared interests.

With all songs .99, all movies $10 and all TV free, only the broadest and lowest demographic is economically viable.

This goes for magazines, books and DVDs too.

It's not a moral question or even a technological one, but an economic one.

[Edward_]

A bit off topic, but I don't see a post on this topic, per se, which seems a bit odd, so here goes: How is this blog not undermining traditional media?

[Aaron Barlow]

How about an amateur review (by me) of your book? Go to ePluribus Media: http://www.epluribusmedia.org/reviews/2007/20070618_cult_of_the_amateur.html

[Paul]

Mr. Keen

Thank you for your book. I read it last week after hearing about it from a friend who is reading it also. I could list the various and sometimes large problems I had with it but won't. And that is because it did one fine thing. It caused me to think (whereas the computor screen just causes me to stare). All the attackes and critiques you have been getting are amusing me greatly.

I have decided to offer a new word to replace the word amateur, as it is used in your book and the digital critics of it. I offer E-mateur, not just for the obiquitious E to stand for all things digital, but to referance both amateur and immature.

Yes I too find a certain romantisicm in the word amateur but see the bloggers and youtubers as fake amateurs who secretly desire professionalism, without the work necessary. Blog plus rant equals (in the internet mind) not amateur but "citizen journalist". Camera plus software equals not home movie maker but "indie filmmaker", ad a political slant and you have "indie documentary".

Such disdain for the professional or skilled (because they make money for their talents) in the capitalist money driven web is absurdly hypocritical. And for these brave souls who believe they are testifying in the wilderness akin to ancient prophets to be so threatened by your lone book is pathetic.

Since you are now in the "cranky old men club, I will put myself there as well, might like this article by science fiction writer Ben Bova, which while not about the internet is about our declining culture and intellectual future
http://www.bonitanews.com/news/2007/mar/11/ben_bova_marching_morons_show_prescience_science_f/

Sincerely

Paul M

[Mary]

Hello Mr. Keen,

I just finished reading your book and I enjoyed it very much and agree
with 99.9% of everything you say. I know you will probably catch a lot
of flak for your views but I'm sure you will be able to fend off your
attackers, probably just by being smarter than most of them are.

I'm a high school teacher and we are always having to check for
plagiarism in our students' writings. It is far too easy to go online
and steal either bits and pieces of essays or pay for an entire essay
already written. Of course, the little darlings think we cannot tell
the difference in their writing and the writing they have stolen or
paid for, so they are always getting busted. But it is tiresome.

I am 58 years old and from that generation that still believes, for the
most part, in expertise, scholarship and professionalism. I am not
anti-technology--I love my new iPod--but as you point out in your book,
when the monkeys run the zoo, it is pure and utter drivel and chaos.

[Roger Thomas]

Hi Andrew,

I've now read your excellent book and while I'd dispute a couple of details I'm very much onside. The most alarming implication of all this is your indication that 'we' need to take steps to reverse this situation, but of course the problem is working out exactly who 'we' are. There's an interesting political subtext to this, in that when the quality and distribution of information was subject to greater control (a phenomenon which dates back to the days of pre-mass literacy), its controllers (sometimes literally) lived or died by the integrity of that information, whether this was Stradivari passing his skills on to his apprentices or Columbus reporting back to Spanish court.

What we now have is a situation where many of 'us' can't actually act on most of the information we have anyway, so 'we' are quite unconcerned about its quality. Revise our understanding of the creation of the universe and I won't care, but change the time of my favorite TV programme without telling me and I'll scream the place down. I'd say that one of the biggest problems is convincing the bread-and-circuses majority that this actually matters to them in the first place.

Of course, there's a flipside-cum-corollary to this, which is the contention that the Internet is effectively a sublimatory device, capable of absorbing all the non-information, non-opinion and non-creativity its democratised citizens can throw it, while leaving the real world for the rest of us. Ironically, while pundits complain about the divide between the digitally franchised and unenfranchised, the true divide might eventually be between those who allow the Internet to harmlessly siphon off all their misinformation and dissent and those who operate primarily in physical reality.

You asked me to comment on your observations on the music industry in particular. In most respects the writing was on the wall in the early 80s when the record business failed to realise that by adopting the CD it was effectively becoming a part of the IT industry. I've actually got an article on this very subject due for publication in the September issue of Sound on Sound (www.soundonsound.com), which I'll gladly forward to you when it appears.

Finally, I rather enjoyed the sideswipes at Dan Gillmor. I can't make up my mind whether he's chuckling to himself at the fact that he espouses 'citizen journalism' via a professionally published book which he was presumably paid to write, or whether that irony has escaped him.

[John Hogle]

Thanks for an excellent book. I also enjoyed your presentation at Google. As a librarian for the last 11 years (public, Exploratorium, and, now, community college) and as a person who previously worked for Thompson-Gale's Computer Publications Database for 11 years, I have long experience in parsing quality information from the poor and amateur as well as teaching online research.

I have been hopeful about the capabilities and intelligence of the larger community all my life, only to be disappointed again and again. The funny thing is I simultaneously felt that stories such as Cyril Kornbluth's 1951 "The Marching Morons" short story and his and Frederik Pohl's 1953 novel, "The Space Merchants," were more likely to come about than the utopian fantasies of so many science fiction writers. And they have to some degree. We have become a marching army of, well, maybe not morons, but, at least, amateurs with neither the intellectual interest nor discrimination to determine what is validated, accredited, substantiated, proven. And, a la "The Space Merchants" we have become the naive pawns of corporate greed. Most take what are given. Most do not question. I can not count the number of times I have directed patrons or students to print articles, scientific research, or, even, quality online Web sites that debunk some subject the persons are seeking information on.

That is why expertise, scientific research, quality reportage remain important to me. Regarding the latter, I am saddened that many newspapers are laying off substantial portions of their investigative staff. And, relating to that, I bring to your attention today's (July 03 07) Non Sequitur cartoon, available on the gocomics.com Web site: http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/

Again, thank you for the "Cult of the Amateur." It is a core part of a mental collage I am assembling, which includes ideas from Anderson's "The Long Tail" and Morville's "Ambient Findability" and which, I suspect, will siphon out tidbits from Weinberger's "Everything is Miscellaneous," which I am just starting.

[avsa]

Good write

[Peter]

I just read the sample first chapter of The Cult of the Amateur. You raise some very relevant and thought-provoking material. One point. You rightly lament the cult of narcissism and the amateur, but why should we listen to the corporate media outlets who have their own agendas and have totally let us down, for example, as to who and what was responsible for the 9/11 event. Any material which doesn't uphold the establishment "Bin Laden and the Muslims" did it view, is automatically censored, ridiculed and removed by corporate media. An intelligent and serious seeker is going to go online and start searching for and reading the substantive material which is out there, from qualified investigators and witnesses. The official view of the establishment media is ridiculous and full of holes as to that event and a lot of others, including the government's WMD propaganda justifying war in Iraq which was catered for and broadcast all day long on the official media. Why should I bother with the NYT if it is just the official mouthpiece for an utterly corrupt government.
Of course, discrimination and judgement is needed faced by the net. But the official report on 9/11 was a joke and every intelligent, reasoning person knows it. The official medias complicity in that event is sickening and makes me very angry so thank god for the internet.
If I want to read Robert Fisk - and he has his limitations as to what he can expose without offending his "owners" - or reviews by Anthony Lane or Rex Reed I can find them just as if I want to view the great art galleries of Russia or Italy, I can find them on the web. How wonderful that is. I agree with you that the "Me" factor is a big one and utterly depressing but I think we have to take the good along with the bad.
Regarding Wikipedia, I long ago stopped using it - it is utterly compromised politically being 100% pro Zionist.