This interview – and a subsequent rant/review that will follow shortly – has been one of the most difficult I have done in several years. This is because it was hard – okay, nearly impossible – to separate the subject matter of how the Internet negatively affects our culture from the fact that I was doing the interview for the very type of site he criticizes.

I decided the solution to that dilemma was to just quote directly what Andrew Keen, author of The Cult Of The Amateur, said about this type of site (letting participants realize he's called us) and ask him to elaborate on this comment:

They are the digital equivalent of online gated communities where all the people have identical views, and the whole conversation is mirrored in a way that is reassuringly familiar. It is a dangerous form of digital narcissism; the only conversations we want to hear are those with ourselves and those like us.

In preparation for the interview, I set up a topic on Newsvine to solicit questions. What was notable this time was seeing how many negative reviews and comments were generated about this book by bloggers and others colleagues I respect. A notable exception was a glowing review in The New York Times from the famously brutal critic, Michiko Kakutani

 

But some, like popular blogger Jeff Jarvis, even went so far as to ask readers to ponder whether it was even worth appearing with him due to the implied credibility it gives him - not to mention the publicity it provides.  Many suggested that to write about him at all was to help him, and I struggled with that.

As you might guess, I have many thoughts and criticisms to share about this book but I'll save that for next week.  I thought that in order to be fair I would keep those opinions separate from the interview today.

So let me begin by saying a few nice things about Mr. Keen. When I emailed him, after reading about his book in Newsweek or Time a few months ago, he quickly arranged to have a copy of the book sent to me and agreed to an interview.  Then, after I started reading it, my opinion of him dropped considerably and my questions and attitude toward the book became more negative.  He could have easily pulled the plug at that point but didn’t.

So thank you, Mr. Keen, for agreeing to do the interview this week.