Nickdfresh
11-28-2009, 09:52 AM
Q&A With Andrew Keen
Andrew Keen is the author of "The Cult of the Amateur," a nonfiction book about the Internet's dangerous impact on contemporary culture. He is also a public speaker and media pundit who describes himself as "the Antichrist of Silicon Valley."
Play It 4-Ward: Do you think there's a positive effect from the Internet, or do you think the Internet has had any positive effect on contemporary culture?
Andrew Keen: I think the Internet is good in that it's irreverent. I think it's good in that it's torn some stuff down. I think it's good that it's worried a lot of fat moguls and people who weren't running particularly efficient or responsible businesses in culture, particularly in television, which I'm not keen on, but also newspapers and music.
So, I think that's a good thing, but I think the problem is that like in other revolutionary situations, in France in 1789 and Russia in 1917, the revolution acquires its own dynamic, its own momentum, and becomes purely destructive and doesn't replace the old system with anything new. And ultimately what replaces it is something worse.
It's not clear still what will replace what is being destroyed. But the new media ecosystem to me doesn't look as viable, as responsible or as interesting as the old mass media world that is withering away.
You suggested in one of your articles that newspapers need to be more opinionated, or actively subjective. But is there such thing as an objective standard now for either news reporting or media? Especially where verifiable fact is an ever rarer commodity when people can report or discuss anything without any need to verify or examine its accuracy?
Good question. Let me respond to that in two ways — well, three ways, actually. Firstly, the biggest problem with this new media revolution is it's against the curator — the authority figure that stands between the audience and the author. So in the old newspaper world, you had editors and publishers [and] fact-checkers and other people who would stand between the journalist and the reader. For the most part, you were pretty much confident that when you picked up the newspaper the majority of what you read was truthful, or at least attempted to be truthful.
The problem with the blog world is you can do away with the intermediary so you have no idea who's doing the writing; no one's checking the reality of the facts, which means a lot of the information online is, by definition, unreliable. This is particularly problematic because in this new world, most Internet consumers — most Internet readers — are impoverished in terms of their media literacy; they're not able to read through this stuff.
I had this experience recently with my son, my 11-year-old, who is pretty smart — or I'd like to think he's smart because he's my son. But I'm always trying to tell him about this stuff, so he went online and he bought some puzzles. He spent a couple of hundred dollars on puzzles and he went to the first site he could find on Google. And I said to him, "Well, why did you go there? How did you know that this site is reliable? How did you know you would get a good deal?" And he said to me, "Well, Dad, if it's top of Google, then it's got to be reliable. It's got to be right."
Now, the reality of Google is that it's not a mediated system. There are no human beings in the Google search engine. There's no one checking whether that puzzle site that showed up first on the Google engine is more reliable, is cheaper. And he's not media literate. So we need to develop media literacy.
Now, secondly in response to your question, I think there is a cultural gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world when it comes to newspapers. The U.S., in particular, has been seduced by this idea of absolute truth in newspapers and that facts are religious — and that the more factual the newspaper could be, the more accurate, the more relevant it is. [But] all facts would come with cultural baggage. All newspapers make a decision about what they cover. It doesn't mean that all newspapers are unreliable, but it does mean that they make value calls.
So when you look at a newspaper like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, they have very different headlines because they're run by very different journalists with very different ideological positions. That's a reality. In the United Kingdom, that reality is acknowledged. In the United Kingdom, you have newspapers on the left and the right and they're not shy to acknowledge that. The problem in the U.S. is that people are unwilling to embrace the idea of ideology within a newspaper and at the same time fuse that with reliability.
If you want to be media literate, if you want to understand what's happening in the world, you're not going to get 30-second nuggets of truth. That's for the lazy, fat consumer, the guy sitting in Idaho or something who expects things to be really easy — the McDonald's version of media. If you want to know what's happening in the world, you've got to read The New York Times, which is liberal. You've got to read The Wall Street Journal, you've got to read the Financial Times, you've got to read The Daily Telegraph ... and then you've got to make up your mind for yourself about where the real value is.
Ultimately, then, the consumer has to do the hard work. The problem with the Internet is it's spread this delusion, this great seduction of ease that we can somehow come to this electronic network and learn the truth about the nature of things in 30-second nuggets. The reverse, of course, is true. In this sense, the Internet is making us ignorant and fat — at least mentally. But you can't blame technology for that — ultimately it's us, it's our culture. So I think there is this cultural disconnect in the U.S.
But overall, if we are to build a reliable media ecosystem, whether it's an electronic one or a physical one doesn't matter. You've got to have a curator. You've got to have human beings checking facts, whether that's on the Google artificial algorithm, whether it's on an online news service, whether it's on online entertainment. If you do away with the human beings — if you do away with the living, breathing people who stand between the creator and the audience — then you are essentially doing away with the value of media.
Play It 4-Ward (http://playit4ward.msn.com/?section=articles&topic=1196304&dataID=Keen_QA&source=msn>1=25062)
Andrew Keen is the author of "The Cult of the Amateur," a nonfiction book about the Internet's dangerous impact on contemporary culture. He is also a public speaker and media pundit who describes himself as "the Antichrist of Silicon Valley."
Play It 4-Ward: Do you think there's a positive effect from the Internet, or do you think the Internet has had any positive effect on contemporary culture?
Andrew Keen: I think the Internet is good in that it's irreverent. I think it's good in that it's torn some stuff down. I think it's good that it's worried a lot of fat moguls and people who weren't running particularly efficient or responsible businesses in culture, particularly in television, which I'm not keen on, but also newspapers and music.
So, I think that's a good thing, but I think the problem is that like in other revolutionary situations, in France in 1789 and Russia in 1917, the revolution acquires its own dynamic, its own momentum, and becomes purely destructive and doesn't replace the old system with anything new. And ultimately what replaces it is something worse.
It's not clear still what will replace what is being destroyed. But the new media ecosystem to me doesn't look as viable, as responsible or as interesting as the old mass media world that is withering away.
You suggested in one of your articles that newspapers need to be more opinionated, or actively subjective. But is there such thing as an objective standard now for either news reporting or media? Especially where verifiable fact is an ever rarer commodity when people can report or discuss anything without any need to verify or examine its accuracy?
Good question. Let me respond to that in two ways — well, three ways, actually. Firstly, the biggest problem with this new media revolution is it's against the curator — the authority figure that stands between the audience and the author. So in the old newspaper world, you had editors and publishers [and] fact-checkers and other people who would stand between the journalist and the reader. For the most part, you were pretty much confident that when you picked up the newspaper the majority of what you read was truthful, or at least attempted to be truthful.
The problem with the blog world is you can do away with the intermediary so you have no idea who's doing the writing; no one's checking the reality of the facts, which means a lot of the information online is, by definition, unreliable. This is particularly problematic because in this new world, most Internet consumers — most Internet readers — are impoverished in terms of their media literacy; they're not able to read through this stuff.
I had this experience recently with my son, my 11-year-old, who is pretty smart — or I'd like to think he's smart because he's my son. But I'm always trying to tell him about this stuff, so he went online and he bought some puzzles. He spent a couple of hundred dollars on puzzles and he went to the first site he could find on Google. And I said to him, "Well, why did you go there? How did you know that this site is reliable? How did you know you would get a good deal?" And he said to me, "Well, Dad, if it's top of Google, then it's got to be reliable. It's got to be right."
Now, the reality of Google is that it's not a mediated system. There are no human beings in the Google search engine. There's no one checking whether that puzzle site that showed up first on the Google engine is more reliable, is cheaper. And he's not media literate. So we need to develop media literacy.
Now, secondly in response to your question, I think there is a cultural gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world when it comes to newspapers. The U.S., in particular, has been seduced by this idea of absolute truth in newspapers and that facts are religious — and that the more factual the newspaper could be, the more accurate, the more relevant it is. [But] all facts would come with cultural baggage. All newspapers make a decision about what they cover. It doesn't mean that all newspapers are unreliable, but it does mean that they make value calls.
So when you look at a newspaper like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, they have very different headlines because they're run by very different journalists with very different ideological positions. That's a reality. In the United Kingdom, that reality is acknowledged. In the United Kingdom, you have newspapers on the left and the right and they're not shy to acknowledge that. The problem in the U.S. is that people are unwilling to embrace the idea of ideology within a newspaper and at the same time fuse that with reliability.
If you want to be media literate, if you want to understand what's happening in the world, you're not going to get 30-second nuggets of truth. That's for the lazy, fat consumer, the guy sitting in Idaho or something who expects things to be really easy — the McDonald's version of media. If you want to know what's happening in the world, you've got to read The New York Times, which is liberal. You've got to read The Wall Street Journal, you've got to read the Financial Times, you've got to read The Daily Telegraph ... and then you've got to make up your mind for yourself about where the real value is.
Ultimately, then, the consumer has to do the hard work. The problem with the Internet is it's spread this delusion, this great seduction of ease that we can somehow come to this electronic network and learn the truth about the nature of things in 30-second nuggets. The reverse, of course, is true. In this sense, the Internet is making us ignorant and fat — at least mentally. But you can't blame technology for that — ultimately it's us, it's our culture. So I think there is this cultural disconnect in the U.S.
But overall, if we are to build a reliable media ecosystem, whether it's an electronic one or a physical one doesn't matter. You've got to have a curator. You've got to have human beings checking facts, whether that's on the Google artificial algorithm, whether it's on an online news service, whether it's on online entertainment. If you do away with the human beings — if you do away with the living, breathing people who stand between the creator and the audience — then you are essentially doing away with the value of media.
Play It 4-Ward (http://playit4ward.msn.com/?section=articles&topic=1196304&dataID=Keen_QA&source=msn>1=25062)