Defender of the expert’s realm

A book is a fitting medium to argue for a reassessment of how Web 2.0 is affecting information and information users, because, as Andrew Keen’s polemic points out, the book as a medium could be under threat.

Relaxed and eager to discuss the implications of Web 2.0 , former web entrepreneur and commentator Keen is no Luddite. He just believes in broadening out the debate before too much damage is done to our academic, cultural and information heritage.

Imagine a cataclysmic change to the way in which information is created and received, with an information regime that pays little heed to universities or respected business information databases. Newspapers have gone the way of the watermill in a world where information and knowledge sharing is not created through a body of excellence that seeks to polish every inch of its creation, but through individuals, each of whom is the author, editor, publisher and distributor of their work. This is the world depicted by Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur .

Loss of creativity

“I’m nervous of creativity and knowledge being lost,” Keen told IWR. If the rise of blogs, wikis, social networks and YouTube continues unabated, Keen believes we could face a return to medieval times. He doesn’t mean that sewage will be tipped straight onto the streets again, but that the great artists and creators will once more be dependent on a few select patrons.

And those patrons will be the only people to reap the benefits of the information they fund, in contrast to today’s national culture and knowledge which is, to use a phrase hijacked by the Web 2.0 acolytes, democratically available. Keen predicts the rise of a digital elite, with everyone who is on the wrong side of the digital divide able to access only cheap, unfounded and ill-thought out information from blogs and wiki sites.

“This a book for teachers, readers, editors, parents and librarians as well as a wider consumer audience,” Keen told IWR. “I’m defending the ideal of editing.” That ideal was one he had when he started writing the book and was only reinforced during its gestation by his experience of the editing process. “I had aggressive editors. They told me to do things again, but intellectually it was a very helpful,” he explained.

Gaynor Backhouse, project manager at TechWatch , recently said: “The issue is who can be seen as a knowledge maker, and the role of books is part of that debate. Books undergo a rigorous filtering of information. If your book gets published, it says something about you as a knowledge source.”

Keen agreed when the point was raised and was full of praise for the teams of expert editors that contribute to books, journals and news.

What concerns Keen the most about the quality of Web 2.0 information is its singularity.

“Bloggers are control freaks. Anyone who is allowing their work to be edited and published in a journal is not a control freak. A-list bloggers are very thin-skinned; they don’t have the humility to be edited.”

Web 2.0 proponents claim that the ability to comment on blogs promotes information quality, but Keen was dismissive, especially of Wikipedia. “The wisdom of the crowd is to simply overwrite,” he said.

So what did he make of fervent blog supporter Kevin Kelly of Wired , who has advocated knowledge holders making money by sp eaking at conferences rather than through sales of their work in the Web 2.0 world as their work is distributed and redistributed in mash-ups?

Keen was not impressed. He countered that experts tend not to be good at shouting about themselves. “The current institutions do a good job of that for them.” As Keen sees it, not only do institutes improve knowledge, they act as third parties for the tasks of promotion and distribution.

Throughout his book Keen says the role of the journalist is to provide readers with an independent analysis of the facts – something that a blogger just cannot deliver.

“I am very idealistic about the mainstream media,” he told IWR. But questioned about the newspaper industry’s own failings, he conceded: “It has been seduced. Reality TV and talkback radio are clear examples of this. Journalism has lost its authority.”

But Keen is not demanding the closure of MySpace. “People should express themselves. What worries me is that this will become our culture.”

And if it does, Keen predicted that the victims would be the public, as few people ever make money from a blog or get a book published.

Road to destruction

The Cult of the Amateur tries to prompt society to question what is happening before too much damage is done by the Web 2.0 wave.

“Had we known what we know now, would we have allowed the destruction of railroads in America, which has caused untold damage to small communities and the environment?” he asked.

Keen wants to spark a debate before the institutions of knowledge and expertise ride the same dead-end tracks as the US railroads. “It is not about the physical versus the virtual. It’s the information I care about.”

Despite taglining his book How today’s internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy, Keen remains “cautiously optimistic” about the future of information.

“We need to re-instil a principle of authority,” he said. “The mainstream media and experts can civilise the web.”

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