The Cult of the Amateur - How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube and the Rest of
Today's User Generated Media are Killing Our Culture and
Book description
A new, updated edition, with a new foreword of Andrew Keen s witty
and provocative polemic against the rise of user-generated content and
the anything goes standards of much online publishing, which set the
blogosphere and media alight on publication. Dubbed the 'anti-christ'
of Silicon Valley and a dot-com apostate Andrew Keen is the leading
contemporary critic of the Internet. and The Cult of the Amateur is a
scathing attack on the mad utopians of Web 2. 0 and the wisdom of the
crowd. Keen argues that much of the content filling up YouTube,
MySpace, and blogs is just an endless digital forest of mediocrity
which, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters,
can alter public debate and manipulate public opinion.
A staggering new book by Andrew Keen. He is an English-born digital
media entrepreneur and Silicon Valley insider who really knows his stuff
and he writes with the passion of a man who can at last see the dangers
he has helped unleash. His book will come as a real shock to many. It
certainly did to me. --A N Wilson, The Daily Mail A shrewdly argued
jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political
gatekeepers and replace experts with 'the wisdom of the crowd'. Keen
writes with acuity and passion. --The New York Times The Cult of the
Amateur needed to be written and it needs to be read. --Management
Today. Andrew Keen is an English digital media entrepreneur and
Silicon Valley insider whose popular writing about culture, media, and
technology has been featured in many newspapers and magazines including
The Weekly Standard, BusinessWeek, Esquire, and The Guardian, as well as
on his own weblog, www. cultoftheamateur. com. He hosts the acclaimed
podcast show, AfterTV, and his views have generated a firestorm of
interest.
