Reviewed by Jason Sternberg



I’ve started receiving e-mails from some of my current and former students, inviting me to join them on Facebook. On the surface, these e-mails seem innocent enough. It’s even slightly flattering to think these people would want me as a part of their online community. However, with one mouse click, feeling flattered usually morphs into feeling slightly creepy. The photos on the sign-up pages–generally taken in what seems to be a state of reduced inhibition of some sort–demonstrate both the value of not always hitting the “send to all” button when emailing, as well as how disturbingly liberal Generation Y’s definition of “too much information” can be.

The consequences of the Internet’s role in blurring boundaries between public and private information (e.g. identity fraud, graduates missing out on jobs following Internet searches by prospective employers) is a relatively small aspect of Andrew Keen’s argument in The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy. However, the examples Keen cites of our “unreasonable level of trust in mankind’s ability to use technology responsibly” (195) demonstrate the central premise of this controversial and much-discussed book; namely, that the Internet’s transformation into a hub for social networking and participatory user-led content creation (commonly referred to as Web 2.0) is, in fact, “undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience, and talent” (15).

Keen is a self-described “pioneer of the first Internet gold rush” in the 1990s who “seduced investors and … almost became rich” (11). In this context, The Cult of the Amateur is an extremely apt title. Keen sees himself has having escaped the clutches of the digital sectarians and their “din of narcissism” (15) and attacks the current online environment with the zeal of a de-programmed cult member:

the free, user-generated content spawned and extolled by the Web 2.0 revolution is decimating the ranks of our cultural gatekeepers, as professional critics, journalists, editors, musicians, moviemakers, and other purveyors of expert information are being replaced … by amateur bloggers, hack reviewers, homespun moviemakers, and attic recording artists. Meanwhile, the radically new business models based on user-generated material suck the economic value out of traditional media and cultural content (16).

These opinions of course, don’t prevent Keen from having his own website and blog.

Many readers will find Keen’s argument in The Cult of the Amateur elitist, hypocritical and his tone disdainful of the “noble amateurs” (14) creating online content. He aligns the development of Web 2.0 with 19th century evolutionary biologist T. H. Huxley’s “infinite monkey theorem”, which argues “that if you provide infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters, some monkey somewhere will eventually create a masterpiece” (2). Keen argues the “democratization” produced by blogs, file sharing and social networking “infantializes the political process, silencing public discourse and leaving the future of the government to thirty-second video clips shot by camcorder-wielding amateurs with political agendas” (68).

There is little doubt much amateur content online is pretty annoying. As Keen points out: “Trawling through the blogosphere, or the millions of bands on MySpace, or the tens of millions of videos on You Tube for the one or two blogs or songs or videos with real value isn’t viable for those of us with a life or a fulltime job” (32). What is an empowering use of new media for some, is just kids humping an ottoman to others (a point hilariously demonstrated recently by The Daily Show, recordings of which seem very difficult to locate online). However, a healthy democracy can sustain both points of view. If you don’t like what you’re getting through your inbox and on the Web, delete it, buy filtering software, or learn to use Google better.

One of Keen’s central concerns is the reliability of information online and The Cult of The Amateur delights in skewering Wikipedia. It uses examples of McDonalds and Wal-Mart editing unfavourable content on their entries (a practice the Australian Liberal Party has recently been accused of), high school graduates posting entries while posing as academics, and recognised authorities on topics such as climate change being censured after repeatedly removing content they believed to be factually incorrect, to argue that the site is a vanity press “with a peculiar sort of vanity, raising up the amateur to a position of prominence exceeding that of the salaried experts who do what they do for money” (p. 40).

However, from this point on, many readers will find that Keen’s argument–like a Wikipedia entry–needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

It’s easy to feel empathy for the independent production companies, record stores and bookshops that have been simultaneously decimated by piracy and “an oligarchic retail economy dominated by Amazon.com, iTunes and MySpace” (104). The thrill of finding an obscure musical or literary gem in a cool shop just doesn’t compare to an online store suggesting you might like something because other shoppers fitting your profile did.

Keen also correctly points out that while an Internet presence may be good exposure for an artist, it won’t necessarily make you rich. For every Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen, or Sandi Thom, there are thousands of bands like The Scene Aesthetic, who, as of September 2006, despite 9-million plays on MySpace, 1.3-million downloads on PureVolume.com and a half million screenings on You Tube had made no money from their recordings and did not have a record contract (110-112).

However, Keen’s argument that user-created online content is robbing legitimate artists of the cultural authority and income they deserve is highly problematic. In democracies, free speech is a given, even if it is from a citizen journalist “shipwrecked in his pyjamas behind a computer, churning out inane blog postings or anonymous movie reviews” (30). For every rant from a political extremist unencumbered by a concern for defamation law, a journalistic code of ethics, or research and interviewing skills, there is a Healing Iraq.

Perhaps journalists are losing jobs and publications downsizing as people move to blogs and other “non-official” online information sources because they hold traditional journalism responsible for “the decline in the quality and reliability of the information we receive” and “distorting, if not outrightly corrupting, our … civic conversation” (p.27). This, of course, is exactly what The Cult of the Amateur accuses citizen journalism of doing.

What is illuminating about Keen’s argument is how it demonstrates that the democratising potential of the Web hasn’t made commercial media any less homogenous and profit-driven. However, at this point, readers may find The Cult of the Amateur’s argument becomes muddled by its elitism. Keen blames both amateur content creators and the sites supporting them for our cultural decline, and bemoans the fact a few old media bastions such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle increasingly struggle for revenue in the face of sites such as Craigslist. This argument not only works according to a high:low culture binary opposition that just doesn’t exist online, but also seems to misunderstand the political economy of Web 2.0.

Keen argues that if we keep encouraging amateurs to stay amateurs, we will eventually run out of legitimate cultural product. Media companies will go out of business and all culture will become amateur. However, if media companies own the channels for distributing this amateur culture, who is to say business won’t thrive? Rupert Murdoch now has millions of teenage girls (among others) working for him thanks to his purchase of MySpace in 2005. Keen cannot seem to decide if this was a “canny” or “desperate” (9) business decision. As Keen himself notes, in Web 2.0, a site’s success is determined not by the number of views each page receives, but rather “by the number of pages of user-generated content potentially available for advertising” (136-137). As such, it is little wonder TV and radio networks are shifting resources away from quality productions and developing more interactive online content (123-126).

It’s a shame Keen didn’t devote the space taken up by his last two chapters to fleshing out these arguments more explicitly. What readers get instead are discussions of identity fraud, online gambling and pornography, which neither shed new light on the topics, nor offer effective ways of combating them. In a fantastic moment of irony, Keen ultimately argues that because citizens are unable to do so themselves, it is up to citizen representatives to show authority and take responsibility for navigating us through Web 2.0.

Clearly, monkeys make bad journalists. Who’s to say they’ll make better politicians?


The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy
(2007)

by Andrew Keen
Allen&Unwin
ISBN: 978-185788-393-0
228pp AU$35.00