Author Andrew Keen to bloggers: Shut the hell up

For some reason, posting on this blog has recently felt like an actor's nightmare. I feel as if I'm dancing around naked (not a pretty sight, I assure you) in front of a sound-proof, one-way mirror, and that legions on the other side are either snorting in disgust or, more likely, not paying attention.

Last night, Andrew Keen's new book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture, was discussed on the News Hour, and the author -- an erudite, irritated looking Brit -- was interviewed on the show.

His point seemed to be that we are all making too much noise, blathering on about our opinions with decreasing knowledge and increasing incivility. We're coalescing into oblasts of opinion, nuking others who don't agree with us, and in the process undermining civil discourse in larger or more traditional media venues that serve as the backbone of a democratic society.

Because we are all transformed into experts through the "radical democratization" of the Internet, we are losing the ability to listen and learn. Keen laments the death of expertise, fearing that it creates a din in the marketplace of ideas that drowns the most learned in the wrath of the loudest.

Becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a musician, a journalist, or an engineer requires a significant investment of one’s life in education and training, countless auditions or entrance and certifying excims, and commitment to a career of hard work and long hours. A professional writer spends years mastering or refining his or her craft in an effort to be recognized by a seasoned universe of editors, agents, critics, and consumers, as someone worth reading and paying attention to. Those in the movie industry submit to long hours, harried schedules, and insane pressure to create a product that will generate profit in a business in which expenses are high and hits are unpredictable. Can the cult of the noble amateur really expect to bypass all this and do a better job?

(His examples are revealing: he seems as concerned with losing his place as a writer and a font of knowledge as he is of YouTube swamping 20th Century Fox.)

Well, that's enough about Andrew Keen. Now, it's time for my opinion.

I can attest to the fact that blogging has created new relationships and new kinds of communities that don't replace, but that are also in no way inferior to, the traditional social or meritocratic circles that the author wistfully mentions. These communities coalesce around ideas, and voices, and values that can affect the world -- have affected my world -- for the better.

Keen acknowledges this, but thinks that the Web has become about chatter instead of change. When asked what he proposes to change, or what he wishes we would change in his interview last night, he said something like this: "I would ask that the 70 million bloggers in this country, when next sitting down at their computer, would honestly ask themselves, 'Does the world really need to know what I had for breakfast this morning?'"

Expertise is different from popularity, the author says. However, I would staunchly defend the expertise of Danny Miller or me True Ann-Sister: by virtue of their distinct kinds of omnivorous curiosity, they attract readers, divulge knowledge, explore new ideas, and participate in debates of their own creation with a depth to which a traditional expert would probably not condescend.

Unfortunately, as the author points out, civility is often trashed by the cloak of anonymity, and listening -- deeply, patiently taking in an author's point -- can die in a dumpster full of vituperative comment and libelous screed. Which is kind of fun -- like watching a train derail in slow motion.

But that's enough about me. What do you think of me?

--T.A.

Comments

[Starry]

I go on listening to you, David!
Keep talking.
I think a lot of blogs serve the purpose that commonplace books used to serve - a place to gather up and collect bits and pieces one finds resonant. To register one's attention and develop it. For me, it comes down to this: am I interested in the vagaries of your attention? in your reflections on what you attend to?
Often; usually, in fact; and when I don't, I'm ridiculously free to take my own attention elsewhere.

[Danny]

Well said, Starry. I haven't heard of of Andrew Keen, and his book sounds interesting to me, but my first reaction to what I've read here is that he's full of elitist crap. OF COURSE discernment is necessary when we're making our many decisions each day about what we will spend time with, whether it's a book already vetted by Keen's so-called "seasoned universe of editors, agents, critics, and consumers" or a blog that we find purely by accident because of some google search on a topic of interest. I guess there ARE blogs out there that begin and end with mundane reports of what someone had for breakfast (although some of those could actually be riveting!) but many other blogs offer a wealth of perspectives, experience, and content that I find enriching and worthwhile. It doesn't mean any of these people should be considered "experts" in anything (except *possibly* their own lives), but since when do we want to hear only from the alleged experts? How great that we can now create online communities with people we would otherwise would never have known about, who write in such a way that resonates with us personally and adds to our own life experience. That said, I do agree with Keen's concern that the Internet is rife with a lot of uninformed bombast but that's where discernment comes in. As if uninformed bombast is a new phenomenon? I'm wary of being limited to the writing of those folks Keen would consider "the most learned." And I find the analogies to doctors and other professionals a bit off-point.

Thanks for including me in the category of bloggers who strive to explore new ideas, especially with the likes of your brilliant sister! YOU are a prime example of that--I love your explorations!

[david]

Starry and Danny: thanks for your wisdom. And your endorsement! Of course, you know I'll never shut up. And I hope neither of you ever do.

[Starry]

Danny's comment makes me wonder: how do we become experts of our own lives? And should we?

[Alison]

You? I loved your answers to the what faith question a few posts below.

Keen? Well, there is a lot of noise out there & a lot of it is opinionated garbage - but there's a lot of good stuff too, and the good stuff is not hard to find. My major disagreement with Keen is that I do believe there's a lot of untapped talent in the world, all of it deserving of a platform to display ideas, thoughts, writing, etc

BTW, Keen has a blog: http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/.

[amba]

Two points:

1) processing and circulating information and ideas is what humans do, like earthworms enrich soil. The internet has widened, deepened and accelerated this process and enabled exponentially many more minds and hearts to take part in it publicly, not just in their own heads. (It just struck me that this probably accounts for our feeling that there's less time than there used to be. It's actually not for a bad reason; it's because we are pushing the envelope of our brains' information-processing capacity. So many ideas and thinkers! So little time!) This makes possible as much of an exponential acceleration of cultural evolution as sexual reproduction enabled the acceleration of biological evolution.

2.) Keen's "seasoned universe of editors, agents, critics, and consumers" -- each part of it, taken separately and together -- is WRONG about 50 percent of the time. In fact, the consuming public is smarter, in the "wisdom of crowds" sense, than the elite sphincter that allows only certain things to reach it. That is what the Internet is for, too -- to bypass that snooty sphincter and get more stuff to the public. That said, the public has one limitation: it's utterly "now." What it recognizes is what springs from and relates to the Zeitgeist. If something is "ahead of its time" or even outside of time, the public is not going to get it. Not till its creator has cut off his ear and gone mad and died. Then it'll be on every college student's refrigerator.

[amba]

Keen has a BLOG???? AAHHHH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAHHHH! Ridiculous.

[amba]

And Starry's right that Danny raised a very, very intriguing question. Are we experts on our own lives? And if not, is anybody?

And my answer is: your spouse. Some spouses. The ones that pay attention, not the ones that demand attention. (There's often, if not always, one of each in a marriage.)