Lighten Up, Keen

Posted in Blogging, New Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0 by Jay Ferrari on July 6th, 2007

Entrepreneur Andrew Keen has it in for amateur bloggers, vloggers, and social networkers. Ye are of an inept ilk, so says he in his book The Cult of the Amateur, nicely encapsulated in this recent NYT article.
According to Andrew:

. . . Web 2.0 is . . . undermining mainstream media and intellectual property rights . . . creating a world in which we will “live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes, and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising.” This is what happens, he suggests, “when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.”

And what happens when mentally calcified entrepreneurs push back against overwhelming paradigm shifts by authoring what are essentially vanity-press screeds against new forms of interaction and innovation? Oh, yeah: The Cult of the Amateur.

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2 Responses to 'Lighten Up, Keen'

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  1. Randall Ferrari said,

    on July 6th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

    “news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip…”
    This seems to be the current condition.
    Let’s not let the great unwashed get too rambunctious.

  2. Jay Ferrari said,

    on July 9th, 2007 at 8:42 am

    “If there is hope, it lies in the proles. If they could become conscious of their own strength, they would have no need to conspire. History does not matter to them.”

    Winston Smith

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