We have just been insulted by an intellectual... Your opinion?
By Aussies2007
@Aussies2007 (5336)
Australia
June 5, 2007 12:08pm CST
Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter.
His name... Andrew Keen, a 47-year-old Briton who founded dot-com era music startup Audiocafe.
"Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys ... are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity," Keen writes in a book.
The title of his polemic, "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture," attacks what he calls the "cut and paste" ethic of Web users, who he says are robbing professionals of their livelihoods.
The villains in Keen's narrative are a "pajama army" of mostly anonymous writers who spread gossip and scandal, "intellectual kleptomaniacs," who search Google to copy others' work and the "digital thieves" of media content in the post-Napster era.
What Keen seem to forget is that the Internet was created for the people... Not for the entrepreneurs wishing to make a quick buck out of the people.
Intellectual should stick to what they do best... and that is to come here and point out our spelling errors. lol
What do you think?
4 responses
@Whisp1976 (488)
• United States
6 Jun 07
I agree with your perspective. I think Andrew Keene is an elitist and in addition his criticism sounds like a case of sour grapes. Why should layman not make an attempt to write and improve his/her skill as a writer just so snobs can continue feeling superior? Keene seems to feel insecure about the closing gap between the so called intellectuals and the "masses". Everybody has the right to atempt to better themselves.
@TDonald (1421)
• United States
6 Jun 07
Geez, I wander hows many of them their fancy books that guy is gonna sell to all us innernet buffoons.
If you notice on Andy's site there is a blog post of his titled "Blogs are Boring". For an excellent example of what he is talking about, see his blog.
@friendship (2084)
• Canada
6 Jun 07
Yes. But I think the people also want to have convenience things, right? That's why an entrepreneur has found the feature of copy and paste. It is for the sake of giving more convenience to customers and they like such feature. With regard to spreading gossip and scandal, most people also like to do it. For them, it is like adding more spicy in their life...LOL
I think every technology may have a capability to be misused. When Albert Einstein invented atomic power, he would not have thought that his invention could create a terrible thing. But at the same time, such technology's disadvantage could also be a good fortune to others. Now, there are software used to protect customers from Internet viruses, thieves of "copy and paste".
@brian_s (570)
• United States
5 Jun 07
I agree with you.
It seems to me that I shouldn't feel so bad for the professionals. They are making more money than I am anyway, even if I am cutting into their business a bit. I think that it should only serve to motivate them to push forward and find new ways.
When photography was invented the good painters, the true professionals, didn't say "Oh no, now these amateurs can make likenesses of people, so they will ruin our business." Instead they were able to show the uniqueness of their media. And some were able to push art forward, to explore new ways of expression.
So isn't it about time for the "Professionals" to start doing what the painters did after the advent of the camera? There will always be mediocrity. It is far too often there in the "professional" work. They need to stop living in the past, and think about new ways to move forward.
