To somebody it matters.

Even before publication, Andrew Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur" is causing a stir. Keen isn't the first person to point to the "dangers" that an exultation of amateurishness presents to western culture (or at least to that part called "high" culture). He is, however, a good polemicist, and he also has internet credentials, so people are listening to him. He may simply be luckily situated at the right spot on the pendulum swinging between a celebration of the amateur that perhaps reached its apex with Time Magazine's Person of the Year award, and the inevitable backlash. Then again, he may actually be influencing that backlash.

Whichever it may be, Keen doesn't pull punches. He seems more than happy to debate whomever he can, and to let the battle rage ... but apparently only up to a point. A report on a recent Berkeley debate between Keen and his critics, from the blog of Sylvia Paull who arranged the event, suggests that there's more than a bit of posing taking place. Paull reports that the debate:

was more like a lovefest than a civil war

and later informs us that:

Keen admitted things weren't as bad for the universe as he depicted in his book, which he described as a diatribe. "But all books are diatribes," he proclaimed, to the surprise of the crowd

On an even more conciliatory note Paull writes that:

Keen agreed with the need for media literacy, which if successful, would enhance the very culture his book says the Internet and its democratizing effects are about to destroy.

So while there may be an immense chasm between the Web 2.0 glorifiers and the staunch defenders of traditional western culture, it's worth noting that the same person who titles his own report on the debate Blogs are boring does so on his blog.

Go to: Going way back, or
Go to: Just who do you think you are?