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The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values

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Author: Andrew Keen
Publisher: Broadway Business
Category: Book

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Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 256
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Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8

ISBN: 0385520816
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.4833
EAN: 9780385520812
ASIN: 0385520816

Publication Date: August 12, 2008
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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show

In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement.

Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors.

In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented.

The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions.

Offering concrete solutions on how we can rein in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 1-5 of 100

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Should Have Been an Article! November 12, 2009
Kevin Currie-Knight (Newark, Delaware)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I am very disappointed in this book, particularly becuase I whole-heartedly agree with the case the author did a poor job of making. The Cult of the Amateur is written by a former web entrepreneur (who developed one of the first internet music websites) who has grown increasingly concerned with a hidden downside of the "democratization" of the internet: when everyone is free to publically opine and distribute their voice, then the idea of the "expert" or "authoritative voice" becomes lost. And contrary to the egalitarian sentiment, the idea that some people's voices may be more informed, knowledgeable, and worthy of consdieration than others is a very important one. (Should a scientist or blogger be the voice we should heed about scientific issues? Should a reporter or a youtube podcaster be the better source of info about political issues?)

I agree with all of this. The problem is that the book's author doesn't really make the case so much as he opines, vents, and rhetoricizes. In a huge irony, the author's diatribe against bloggers is of no better quality or insight than the very bloggers he rails against! Except that his book is about 190 pages longer than the average blog post.

I got through about half of this book before I realized that the author simply rehashes and rehashes points he made in his introduction. (1) The concept of authority is very important to having an informed citizenry. (2) The idea of "democratic" technology like blogs, youtube podcasts, etc, threatens that concept. (3) The system of media we have in place is often superior becuase, unlike blogs and the like, it is subject to fact-checking, legal constraints and other checks against irresponsibility. If you remember these, you don't need to read the book because the rest involves the author giving example after example and rehashing one of the above points.

The other thing thta annoyed me is that the author's case is a very one-sided approach to what is, to me, a very nuanced issue. Reading this book makes one think that there are really no benefits to the proliferation of blogs, youtube, etc. That there are also benefits to thes technologies is completely missing from the authors discussion. Instead of seeing this as a "with the good comes the bad" issue, our author comes off as a cranky curmudgeon who laments everything that has happened after the year 2000. I am sure he is not really this cranky, but if not, he did a lousy job of dispelling this interpretation.

In close, this book is simply not worth your time. As a book of ideas, it is empty (even though the author's case could have been strong). Even if you are looking for punditry, this book is just not well written. The words "monkey" and "stupid" are used way too often for me to consdier the author as a talented rhetoricist.

You should just as well save your money for another book.

2 out of 5 stars

Interesting perspective but just a big book of complaining October 6, 2009
ccollett (Atlanta, GA)
The argument presented is definitely interesting and makes you think about the downside of social media amidst all the hype about how wonderful it is. So that is good. But I got what he was saying after the first chapter and then the rest was just a lot of complaining and ranting with no real supporting evidence. By the third chapter I felt he was just beating a dead horse. I couldn't finish the book. This would've made a great article or blog post, not a full book...

I recommend reading the first chapter in the bookstore and moving on with your life to more constructive books.

3 out of 5 stars

Controversial but interesting August 10, 2009
G. Perera (Perth, Australia)
For the last few years, many people have been talking up the idea of Web 2.0, community, collaboration and participation. But in this book, Andrew Keen presents the other side of the equation. The sub-title of the book pretty much sums up his point of view "How today's Internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy".

His main argument is that the new Internet promotes popularity over expertise, trivia over serious news, and sound bites over substance. He also talks about things like the death of specialty music stores because of easy access to downloadable music; the slow demise of newspapers and TV due to "citizen journalism" through blogs and forums; and the growth of on-line gambling, pornography and other "Net nasties".

I don't agree with everything he says, but I do think he's right - to some extent. This is a well-reasoned book, and one worth reading, especially if you're a fan of everything Web 2.0. There's so much out there praising it; it's worth seeing the opposite side of the debate.

5 out of 5 stars

Andrew Keen: Apostate or Prophet? July 9, 2009
D. Smith (Foothills, NC)
The initial response to Keen's title would be to envision a critique of contemporary culture via a religious ideological framework. There are other books like this one, such as Robert Mendelsohn's Confessions of a Medical Heretic that viewed medical practice as an ecclesiastical hierarchy. So here we have a religious entity, the Web 2.0 cult, but there is more, it is dangerous being in the model of Jonestown (p.12). We also have a defector, an apostate from the true faith which is Keen, and are about to hear the story of one who has escaped with his hide, or rather his soul. Martin Luther told a story like this one a half millennium ago. In human adventure narratives, we take such stories as fact; in religious studies, such stories are taken as the product of disenchanted individuals and are rarely either accurate or objective. So do we read Keen as an objective technological critic, or as a believer who has lost his faith and wishes that all others should loose theirs too? The choice is ours.
Having been an IT manager, a parent, and an educator, I don't really see Keen as an apostate (his own term) from technology in general, an alarmist, or wacko. On the contrary, he frequently admits being a lover and user of technology. What he refuses to do is to sell his soul in exchange of a Utopian vision, which may very well be a dystopia. He is correct in seeing modern culture, including technology, as sellers of indulgences that will get the faithful in to heaven. It happens every day, and businesses want to keep customers, even Web 2.0 businesses. What greater reward to faithfulness than the promise of heaven or utopia. The only problem, says Keen, is that they don't deliver the goods. Keen reveals himself as an avowed pragmatist (p. 176)with such remarks. Web 2.0, though offering the sacred "democratization" of information, fails to tell us what is important or authentic. For all we know, we have been sent to the salvage yard to buy a new automobile.
After the execution of Socrates, Plato didn't have much good to say about democracy. It was a democratic society that condemned the old philosopher to death. I expect that the reason that America is a Republic and not a democracy has something to do with Plato's writings and the possibility that the founding fathers considered democracy a form of mob rule. Keen thinks the same of Web 2.0 and its applications, such as YouTube, but especially Google. Plato made democracy only the second worst type of government, the worst was tyranny. It is possible that Keen is looking in this direction when he enumerates the vast stores of personal information that search engines et al retain. If the ultimate search engine takes on godlike qualities (p. 183), then maybe Keen is a prophet and folks should consider his warnings.
Overall, the style of the book is full of intertextuality and the reader must have some knowledge of western culture and literature to enjoy the allusions to Homer, the Bible, Huxley (2 of them), Orwell, and many others. Keen doubts if folks get much of this sort of cultural literacy from Web 2.0. It seems that Keen is at least right on one points. The time spent on social networks is often wasted on addictive drivel by teens and adults alike (p. 160). Yes, the addictive nature is real. It is reminiscent of the tobacco companies and the findings that drugs were included with the product to increase dependency. Could Google and others also be held responsible for promoting and maintaining addictions to Web 2.0?

1 out of 5 stars

I tried, I really did - credibility destroyed in 6 pgs. July 5, 2009
Meijer Bjorn (Boise, ID)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

As the author asked me to, I came into this book with an open mind. I wanted to know his thoughts. From the cover to the first six pages, there was contradiction and false opinion that I had to stop.

First, the cover states "How ... user generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values." Then on page xiv of the forward he states "Blogs...and their ilk may not directly lead to the corruption of our culture...but is contributing to it." If you say it's destroying society, keep to your guns. Backing away from your point says you are having trouble defending your opinion.

He also states that information on Wikipedia can be put there by anyone and nobody is checking it's validity. That is flat out false. You have to be a registered user to add to Wikipedia and volunteers are fact checking the information. Google - Maurice Jarre Wikipedia Social Experiment - for how the Wikipedia information is checked, tested and validated. It also puts holes into the theory that normal news sources provide the quality he states.

Change is a reality, it always will be. To say this new change is ruining society is giving very little credit to people's ability to discern information and make solid choices.

His criticism can be attested to human nature and you can pick the change throughout history and it has been given similar criticism. Galileo's theory, the printing press, radio, television, and the list can go on. Understand change happens. Make choices to make it work for you instead of whining about it.

Showing reviews 1-5 of 100

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