Who is Andrew Keen? When I asked him for some biographical information he pointed me to his blog:
The San Francisco Chronicle recently wrote that “every good movement needs a contrarian. Web 2.0 has Andrew Keen.” Andrew is indeed the leading contemporary critic of the Internet.
Andrew hasn’t always been a contrarian. In the mid Nineties, he was a member of the pioneering generation of Silicon Valley visionaries who first “got” the Internet. He founded Audiocafe.com in 1995, and, securing significant investment from Intel and SAP, established it as one of the most highly trafficked websites of the late nineties.
Somewhere along the line, his opinion changed. It’s not totally clear from the book what happened. These days, Keen hosts an Internet chat show called afterTV and writes for various publications.
Scott: Were you surprised by the response to the book by writers like Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford Law School professor, lawyer, author? Lessig blasted the book, citing errors and generalizations.
Andrew: Not surprised. Think of Lessig as the equivalent of an all-powerful papal authority (he has the nasality and bald pate of a supreme prelate). As Victor Keegan of The Guardian wrote today, “I'm the Martin Luther of the Internet. And I've got more hair than Lessig and a much sexier voice.”
Scott: What was your goal with this book? Bloggers on panels with you have said you have likened the book to a grenade intended to annoy as many people as possible. Is that an accurate assessment of your goal with this book? Is there anything you wish you had done different with the book?
Andrew: It's certainly meant to challenge the assumptions of bloggers. But there's a much more serious goal of the book too. This is a book written for a mainstream, non technophile audience — parents, teachers, librarians, editors, lovers of the arts, musicians, IP lawyers, writers, college professors, all professionals in fact — who are troubled and confused by the Web 2.0 revolution. That's my real audience. These are the people with whom this book is resonating.
The one thing I wish I would have added is a chapter critiquing the worst elements of mainstream media. I think that the most troubling thing about mainstream media is that it itself has fallen under the spell of the cult of the amateur. Thus, reality TV and call-in radio are one step away from the cultural anarchy of the blogoshere.
Article comments
1 - Ian Johnson
That is a great interview - I find both sides of this debate extremely interesting to regard.
You might also be interested in this article on Larry Sanger's Citizendium blog review of Keen's book.
Thanks again for your article.
- Ian Johnson, Out Now
2 - SCott Butki
Andrew Keen is on the Colbert Report tonite.
3 - John W. Ratcliff
I think you may be right, Keen is simply taking an absurd position to sell his book. I would so *love* to 'debate' him.
My first question would be, "Why don't you believe in the right to free speech?"
As far as self-publishing goes, our most famous of Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, was a self-made man, without a formal education, and changed the world through self-publishing.
Blogs are as American as apple pie and this British tart Keen needs to realize that his country already lost that war
4 - VL
Keen spends all that time on the Internet and he's never heard the term "troll"?
5 - Scott Butki
You noticed that too, did you? I thought that was odd as well.