Book review: The cult of the Amateur

“It’s the blind leading the blind – infinite monkeys providing infinite information for infinite readers, perpetuating the cycle of misinformation and ignorance,” thunders Andrew Keen in his polemic The Cult of the Amateur, a book, not a blog, about “how today’s internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy”.

Keen is an ex-web entrepreneur and at times the book reeks of the confessional – here is a man wracked with guilt for the damage he has wrought as a result of his actions. Now a member of the literati, Keen is looking to assuage that guilt.

Most commentators adopt an evangelical posture on Web 2.0 services such as blogging, Wikipedia and social networking . But Keen’s book is a vision of dystopia, where the democratisation of the ability to publish information is a wrecking ball, bringing down not only the companies whose foundations are built on traditional publishing models, but the entire human culture of knowledge and information sharing.

Web 2.0 is creating quantity and drowning quality, according to Keen’s persuasive arguments. He uses well-researched examples of experts at Cambridge pushed aside by the amateur editors of Wikipedia . Keen puts great faith in the filtering processes of traditional publishers and media companies, with sub-editors and editors all helping polish a rough diamond into a glittering gem. Keen denounces the individualism of a world where the author is expert, editor, sub and publisher.

However, he trips his own argument up with an overbearing faith in newspapers. The book reverences newspapers as paragons of honesty devoid of all bias.

Keen does offer some answers and is not backward in throwing his weight behind some Web 2.0 startups which agree with his vision of an information world where the traditional authoritarian heads remain just that. Larry Sanger’s Citizendium and Joost from the founders of Skype are praised.

The book suggests that individualists, not only as creators of Web 2.0 content but also as consumers, can prevent the monkeys from annihilating our culture.

Keen offers some small chinks of light at the end of a very dark tunnel. His arguments are powerful and realistic, and I welcomed his insistence that individuals need to resist the urge to pretend to be experts.

Mark Chillingworth

In Brief

The Cult of the Amateur
Andrew Keen
Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Price £12.00

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