A must-read for all internet web 2.0 enthusiasts, an article by Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur
Web 2.0 has transformed our culture into a crowd of mediocrity without a voice.
The open community, even at its most intelligent, is functionally incapable of writing great books, making classic movies, or producing hit songs. Without a single authoritative voice, culture is transformed into muddle; without a dominant author, art degenerates into consensual miscellany. There is no evidence of successful, collective art. Not a single movie, not one book, not even a popular song.
5 responses so far ↓
Marko // Aug 3, 2007 at 8:09 am
I’m not completely unsympathetic to Keen’s idea, but one thing certainly isn’t true. There are very few movies that are not a collective art. Right now I can’t think of any that I’d also label as art.
Even though I see myself as a bit of a skeptic to some of web 2.0 ideas, I do think his opponents make a better case. They also do it without needless provocations.
Matej // Aug 3, 2007 at 8:38 am
Meh, another guy building a career on the avocato diabolo angle. One of the many effective rebuttals of his ‘heretic’ views was just posted by one Olly Buxton as an Amazon book review (sic) here.
Marko Bijelić // Aug 4, 2007 at 3:50 pm
The Internet is not killing our culture. I think that Web 2.0 is marketing phrase (as it was before X and Y generations) on Internet for current subculture of middle 2000’s. This article is article for article’s sake. You can always be part of of closed source culture ;-)
Pop Will Eat Itself. We live in remix era. Bastard pop, mash-ups, white labels, iPods…
admin // Aug 4, 2007 at 4:52 pm
..My class in the fall is called “User-generated”, and it looks, among other things, at the tension surrounding that phrase, and in particular its existence as an external and anxiety-ridden label, by traditional media companies, for the way that advertising can be put next to material not created by Trained Professionals.
All right-thinking individuals (by which I basically mean Anil Dash and Heather Champ) hate that phrase. Now my friend Kio Stark* has come up with what seems like a nice, and more anthropologically correct version: Indigenous Content (which is to say “Created by the natives for themselves.”)
Source.
Piotr Jakubowski // Aug 7, 2007 at 4:21 pm
You know, coming across this article was interesting. On one hand you have the idea that this concept that the internet is the window through which people follow, but on the other hand, we can argue that it’s a place where people lead.
I may agree slightly with the article as I think in many cases the internet is a cause of “group think”, especially in these wonderful places we call online communities. The people are followers, and fall into the same categories as the followers in real life.
The internet also, however, provides a great base for innovators to take their ideas to the next level.
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