Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture. New York: Doubleday/Currency, 2007. 228 pp. Hardcover $22.95. ISBN 978-0-385-52080-5

Andrew Keen insists he is neither anti-technology nor anti-progress. Yet this veteran of the dot com era begins his recent book, The Cult of the Amateur (Doubleday/Currency, 2007), sounding much like a high-culture snob pooh-poohing the vulgar masses for having appropriated the Web as their own and, in the process, wreaking potential destruction on our economy, culture and values. Keen's polemic hints less at neo-Luddite dissent than at an underlying bitterness and resentment--at his own gullibility at having been so easily sucked into the Internet dream, and also at those who have taken the technology out of the hands of professionals like himself ("I almost became rich" [p. 11], he confesses in the beginning of the first chapter). Drawing on 19th-century evolutionary biologist T. H. Huxley's "infinite monkey theory," Keen fears what lies ahead when the masses are empowered with far-reaching technology. As the author describes it, Huxley's theorem asserts that if infinite monkeys are provided with infinite typewriters, one of these monkeys will eventually create a masterpiece. Keen updates and reverses the theorem, replacing monkeys with humans and typewriters with networked personal computers; and "instead of creating masterpieces, these millions and millions of exuberant monkeys--many with no more talent than our primate cousins--are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity" (pp. 2-3). By the end of the introduction, a reader would have just cause to feel a bit insulted.

But if you haven't tossed the book out the window just yet as one extended tantrum--and are willing to patiently look past the author's continued candor on the infinite monkey metaphor--you begin to encounter a number of points that are likely to give you pause, possibly in alarm. Keen's own epiphany about the implications of the Internet for our cultural institutions and organizations came in 2004, during an O'Reilly Media-sponsored camping trip with two hundred fellow marshmallow-roasting Silicon Valley utopians (the irony of the event itself overlooked by the author). Campers tingled with excitement that the Internet was back and better than ever because Web 2.0 would "democratize" knowledge, information and media. A lofty ideal, and one that Keen finds more dangerous than admirable. Democratization of the Internet sounds to Keen like a frantic free-for-all, implying J. S. Mill's free marketplace of ideas, but one in which reason is crippled and truth therefore choked under the weight of participants' self-absorbed yammering.

Although Keen is not shy about naming names in his attacks on those who advocate such democratization (including Kevin Kelly of Wired magazine and Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig), he chooses Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory as emblematic of the position advocating a democratized Internet. According to Keen, Anderson celebrates the flattening of culture enabled by the Web, where "there will be infinite shelf space for infinite products, thus giving everyone infinite choice" (p. 29). The Wired magazine editor proposes an economics of abundance that assumes raw talent is just as abundant. Not so, Keen warns. Talent, he asserts, is built and nurtured by intermediaries with the "special training, knowledge, [and] hands-on experience to generate any kind of real perspective" (p. 30). It's the infinite monkeys versus the long tail, the professional versus the noble amateur.

Harold Innis, in The Bias of Communication (1951/1991), argues that social change and the development of communication technologies are inextricably entwined. Each medium of communication has its own way of organizing and controlling information, and those who control the dominant communication systems and access to them not only monopolize knowledge, but can define what constitutes legitimate knowledge in the first place. The monopoly of knowledge shifts, and social change results, when a new communications medium rises to dominance. For example, writes Innis, "The monopoly of knowledge of the Brahmins in India based on the oral tradition and the limitations of communication had led to the spread of Buddhism with its emphasis on writing and its appeal to the lower classes" (p. 50). Monopolies of knowledge rely on a hierarchy of professionals and amateurs, but in the Web 2.0 world, "amateurism, rather than expertise, is celebrated, even revered" (Keen, 2007, p. 37). The noble amateur emerges as the reigning figure of today's Internet, and Keen fears not that the knowledge monopoly merely shifts, but instead completely dissipates; he quotes Lewis Mumford to argue that in undermining the expert in Web 2.0, we get "a state of intellectual enervation and depletion hardly to be distinguished from massive ignorance" (p. 45).

Web 2.0 vests the noble amateur with the power to define at whim what is legitimate knowledge. Keen observes that such knowledge generation amounts to digital narcissism: we broadcast ourselves on social networking sites, link to others who confirm our own views, and click on the same links that everybody else does because they are at the top of the search list. The authority of what is true and what isn't rests on the "wisdom of the crowd." This "collective intelligence," as Keen terms it, threatens the integrity of political discourse, professional standards, and the very pillars of capitalism—which are grounded in specialization and the division of labor. Drawing on the work of Adam Smith and Jürgen Habermas, the author asserts that when the work of talented professionals and intellectuals is undermined, we are left with an ear-splitting cacophony where any professional is just another voice among millions. I would imagine that no one who has invested vast amounts of time, energy, and resources in their professional and intellectual training wants to face such a predicament.

Simply put, Keen suggests that many jobs are at risk. These jobs just happen to be located in the institutions that generate and nurture our cultural discourse. When cultural institutions—media companies, for example—flounder, people lose jobs, shareholders lose investments, and we lose quality content: "In our coming digital future, God may not be dead—but commerce and culture may be" (p. 135). The money is siphoned into the pockets of those people who simply provide the platform on which amateurs express themselves. Further, community and common conversation are threatened by our tendencies to seek information that mirrors our own biases and strong, but uninformed, opinions. Much of the time, laments Keen, we don't even know from whom we are getting this information, which erodes the trust that is the foundation of community: "If our national conversation is carried out by anonymous self-obsessed people unwilling to reveal their real identities, then...community degenerates into anarchy" (p. 80). There always seems to be a new scandal to further erode our trust in the information we find on the Web, yet we continue to look to it and rely on it for the answers, even contributing to it ourselves—thinking perhaps we can do a better job than the other amateurs out there?

Among the amateurs that seem to most arouse Keen's ire are citizen journalists, who help to spread unfounded rumors and sensationalized gossip under the guise of objective, eyewitness reporting. Lacking, however, is further attention to the ways in which traditional news outlets are eating it all up; we have seen CNN, for example, turning to "I-Reporters" for such stories as the Virginia Tech shooting, the New York City steam pipe explosion, and the Minneapolis bridge collapse. What happens when the traditional media are complicit in nurturing the very amateur against which Keen hopes to protect them?

However, Keen reserves an entire chapter for an extended lamentation of the ways in which the noble amateur is destroying independent record stores and budding musical talent through illegal downloads. Keen is clearly getting personal here; as the founder of Audiocafe.com, one of the earliest digital music sites, Keen harbors a deep and abiding interest in music: "my fantasy was to have music playing from 'every orifice,' to hear the whole Bob Dylan oeuvre from my laptop computer, to be able to download Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concertos from my cellular phone" (p. 11). Citing the closing of Tower Records as the harbinger of the independent record store's demise, Keen predicts that the billions of dollars stolen annually from artists, labels, distributors, and record stores by illegal downloads will ultimately result in less choice, fewer labels, and an oligarchic digital retail economy. With the demise of record stores, we also lose the deeply knowledgeable store clerk who acts as cultural tastemaker—online, amateur reviewers, of course, being poor substitutes.

Extrapolating these circumstances to literature and other creative pursuits in the next chapter, Keen argues that "In any profession, when there is no monetary incentive or rewards, creative work stalls" (p. 115). When indiscriminate piracy of intellectual property stunts professional creativity, there will no longer be anything on which to base these industries, or even culture itself.

In addition to economic and creative consequences for our culture, Keen finds troubling moral implications of permitting the noble amateur to run amok in Web 2.0. The Internet, he argues, fosters and normalizes irresponsible behavior that undermines a society built on hard work, innovation, and intellectual achievements. Specifically, he cites the pilfering of intellectual property, illegal music downloads, plagiarism, and online gambling as dangerous conduct in cyberspace for our moral well-being. These behaviors, he argues, feed the fantasy of getting something for nothing. Posing further threat to our sense of morality is the online availability of sex and pornography. The Internet makes porn ubiquitous, more available, diverse and perverse than ever before. Social networking sites, like MySpace, are magnets for sexual predators. This situation makes Keen wonder what kids are learning from Web 2.0 about sex, love, and respect for themselves and others. New media are altering our behaviors and habits of mind, what we think with and about; Keen demonstrates that the Web 2.0 medium changes how we construct and act within our moral framework—and he's not happy with the colors of the new fabric.

The final realm that Keen finds endangered by a democratized Internet is that of privacy. In Web 2.0, contends Keen, the right to privacy is an antiquated notion. Instead, we have become a digital surveillance culture, where our deepest fears and emotions are "broadcast without our knowledge or permission to the world" (italics in original, p. 166). According to Keen, "Google is within five years of having sufficient information to be able to track the exact movements and intentions of every individual" (p. 181). Worse yet, we are complicit in our own surveillance as so many of our activities move online, from shopping to a whole array of user-generated content. Keen laments our attraction to this digital panopticon, not least because our rights to free expression are in jeopardy. In a world where we all get to spy on everyone else, our reputations may rest on our ability to keep everything under wraps, for the most personal and salacious material promises the most power to those who obtain it.

Although first impressions may suggest that The Cult of the Amateur is merely an elitist tirade, a closer--and more patient--reading finds a more complex argument at work, and many of Keen's points are well taken. Every semester brings a struggle with my students over the issue of intellectual pilfering and the trustworthiness of Internet sources. (Keen cites the Center for Academic Integrity's 2005 finding that "77 percent of college students didn't think that Internet plagiarism was a 'serious' issue" [p. 145]). By the conclusion of the book, the author admits his acceptance of digital technology as inescapable. Given as much, what, then, are we to do? After his extensive lamentations, he at least offers some possible solutions. Establishing his pragmatist ground, Keen argues: "Our challenge, then, is to protect the legacy of our mainstream media and two hundred years of copyright protection within the context of twenty-first century digital technology. Our goal should be to preserve our culture and our values, while enjoying the benefits of today's Internet capabilities" (p. 185).

As a corrective to the amateur-generated content of Wikipedia, Citizendium stands out to Keen. Developed by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger--who eventually saw the error of his ways--Citizendium is "an experimental new wiki project that combines public participation with gentle expert guidance" (Sanger, quoted in Keen, 2007, p. 187). Keen offers Joost and Brightcove as two correctives to YouTube, because they maintain the division between content creators and content consumers. Such sites give Keen hope that Web 2.0 can be used to empower the authority of the expert rather than overshadow or, worse, destroy it. Failing newspapers should look to Britain's Guardian Unlimited, the online version of the Guardian; Keen argues that the model employed by the Guardian Unlimited demonstrates that newspapers can embrace the new medium, maintain professional standards, enlarge readership, and increase revenues all at once.

For the music industry, Keen suggests streamlining the costs of packaging, storing, and distributing physical albums to make CD prices more competitive with digital albums. On this point, Keen overlooks a potential roadblock: even if CD prices become more competitive, the predominant playback devices—iPods, for example—are likely to nurture a preference for digital albums. Another piece of advice Keen has for the music industry is to abandon its faith in digital rights management (DRM) software as a fruitless endeavor and instead look to such sites as eMusic for a successful model for surviving Web 2.0, integrity intact.

To preserve our moral fabric, Keen thinks that some degree of government regulation could prove useful "to protect us from our worst instincts and most self-destructive behavior (p. 196). He calls for congressional legislation to curb illegal online gambling, fraud, identity theft, stealing of intellectual property, and pornography and sexual predators. The laws must effectively catch up to our technology so that they are actually applicable. Social networking sites and parents themselves must supplement government action by getting involved and monitoring content more closely to protect young users.

Finally, Keen proposes that "At the end of the day, perhaps the long-term viability of our media depends upon the actions and behaviors of each of us" (p. 191). But who is "us"? Academics? Administrators? Teachers? Technologists? The millions and millions of "monkeys" who are currently basking in their self-generated mediocrity and ignorance? After Keen's description of how the Average Joe is bringing down our values, economy, and culture, one is hardly left with much hope that a widespread reversal in behavior will spring forth. Perhaps what we need to understand is the why behind people's adoption and use of the Internet in all the ways that Keen finds so dangerous: "People will only adopt a technology if it resonates with a latent desire. The sheer scale of interest in cyberspace suggests there are intense desires at work here" (Wertheim, 1999, p. 29). I don't think that Keen's suggestion of changing our actions and behaviors is sufficient; we may need to look deeper and engage in some difficult cultural soul-searching to address the attraction of the noble amateur to the Internet. However, Keen does provide some ground on which to begin that discussion—a discussion imperative to have in our classrooms, conference rooms, and homes.

References
Innis, H. A. The bias of communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991 (Original work published 1951).

Keen, A. The cult of the amateur: How today's internet is killing our culture. New York: Doubleday/Currency, 2007.

Wertheim, M. The pearly gates of cyberspace: A history of space from Dante to the internet. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1999.