The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, Andrew Keen, Doubleday, 2007

The Internet of the 21st century, also called Web 2.0, has become a participatory marvel, letting anyone post anything, anywhere, without having to go through, or be approved by, anyone. According to this book, that is also its biggest drawback, not just for the Internet, but for all of American culture.

The two biggest culprits in the destruction of American culture are the sites Wikipedia and YouTube. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit at any time. It doesn't matter if the person doesn't know anything about the subject of the entry they are changing. It also doesn't matter if the edited information is totally wrong, or downright malicious. No approval is required. The legitimate encyclopedias are suffering greatly; people would rather use Wikipedia with its potentially wrong information. YouTube is the video equivalent of Wikipedia. Again, anyone can post anything, with no thought given as to whether or not the video is accurate or fair.

The author explores the near-destruction of the music business by file sharing and downloading; the movie business is not far behind in terms of Internet-caused damage. The site craigslist has done major damage to newspaper ad revenue, a major source of money. Newspaper readership is steadily dropping, as people go to blogs for news, leading to the possibility of journalism becoming totally advertiser-driven, which would mean covering little more than celebrities, diets and self-help. Anything can be cut, pasted and re-mixed, putting great pressure on concepts of copyright and ownership. A major assertion of the author is that there are no "gate-keepers" on the Internet, no one to help the average person discover what information is, or is not, accurate.

There is hope on the horizon. In 2006, one of the creators of Wikipedia started Citizendium, a wiki encyclopedia but with experts who have the authority as the final word in their area of specialty. Legislation has been passed to protect kids from predators on sites like MySpace, but parents have the primary responsibility to know what their kids are doing online.

Lest anyone think otherwise, this is not some back-to-nature, anti-technology rant; the author is a Silicon Valley insider. This book is worth reading and recommended for everyone, from those who live on the Internet, to those who want nothing to do with it.