A testament to fear

Andrew Keen, The cult of the amateur.

This is a book grounded in fear and reaction. Keen does not like the online world of wikinomics, citizen journalism, blog-based commentary, and open source software.

What he seems to fear is loss, by elites, of control over product and loss, by corporations, of money. His first fear is based on the concept of authority, as in "Joe is an authority on baseball." Keen believes that bona fide experts will lose their place in society and that their expertise will be buried under a sludge pile of drivel from bloggers and wikipedia contributors. He even cites as statement by Jurgen Habermas to that effect.

I disagree. Expertise is valuable because it is useful. The experts, as long as they continue to provide value, have nothing to fear. They might have to shape up, stop resting on their laurels, and get online, but once they adapt they will do fine.

Keen's second fear, when examined closely, is almost comical. There is little chance that kids who upload videos to youtube.com will bankrupt Fox or that an amateur programmer who creates, and gives away, his own spreadsheet will bring Microsoft to its knees. For every local company that loses money to an internet competitor there is an internet company building a global market. Amazon, Google, and Facebook are massive generators of wealth. The wealth is being repositioned and Keen seems intent on speaking for folks who want it to stay where it is (with them).

For me, Andrew Keen comes across as a voice of reaction, a fearmonger desperately clinging to the status quo.