Andrew Keen: provocateur and nothing more

I attended a symposium tonight, "Is the Web a Threat to Our Culture?," at the University of California-Berkeley, sponsored by the UC Berkeley School of Information, the UC Berkeley Library, the UC Berkeley Mass Communications Department, and the Berkeley Center for New Media.  The talk was a forum between the ever-intentionally-provocative Andrew Keen (author of the much-maligned The Cult of the Amateur) and Paul Duguid, adjunct professor at the UCB School of Information (both Brits, oddly enough).  The moderator was Geoffrey Nunberg, adjunct professor at the UCB School of Information.   In a room that seated roughly 80 people, 100 or more of us packed ourselves in.  The session was being video-recorded, so hopefully it will be made available on the school's audio archive soon!

Summary of the Talk
The moderator, Nunberg, began by discussing students' "elevator speeches" about the School of Information - and that a common theme was the study of information in a cultural and social context.  He then talked about how our idea of "the ideal web" also ended up including things like pornography, fraud, defamation, unreliable information, and defamation, just like the rest of the world.  He began by asking Keen "What is wrong with Web 2.0?"

Andrew Keen was the first speaker.  He began by suggesting that generally there are two things wrong with Web 2.0: it doesn't do what its ideological supporter says it does and it's also a bad thing for cultural producers and creators.  Keen defined Web 2.0 as a term coined by Tim O'Reilly as a marketing tool that O'Reilly tried to trademark for his conference (which came off as a snotty half-truth dig at O'Reilly that has been debated elsewhere).  Web 1.0 was premised on taking traditional professionally created content and using the internet as a traditional distribution channel for content, largely because information is cheaper to distribute electronically than in physical form. 

Web 2.0 is a turning on its head of 1.0 to Keen: Google epitomizes everything both good and bad about the Web 2.0 revolution.  Rather than creating content themselves, Google’s search engine supposedly becomes more and more intelligent through the tracking of our own activities - out of the wisdom of the crowd you get an AI that weeds through information, and on which they can sell ads, therein lies the money.  Google doesn't have to employ experts to create its search engine, but Yahoo!'s does (says Keen).  He cited Wikipedia, MySpace, and YouTube as Web 2.0 models - other empty vessels in which we dump our content and create content from which they can make ad revenue. 

Web 2.0 allows everyone to publish on the web - he cited "the blogging revolution" as an example.  By doing so you do away with the experts, the professionals, the music publishers, the Hollywood people, the "cultural hierarchy" (not Keen's term, but something he took from who he calls "the Web 2.0 Boosters'").  He states that his opposition believes that Web 2.0 creates a cultural arena where there are more and more voices to be heard.  In his view, most of that content is worthless and pointless and by giving consumers' the right to access free content of many types, they expect free content of all types.  The crisis in the music business, television, publishing, and the movie business, newspaper business, is both a consequence and a cause of Web 2.0 to Keen.  To Keen, Web 2.0 is not making us any more democratic.  It's increasingly difficult to make money as a creative professional: fewer journalists, fewer mid-level authors, and it's not being replaced in a coherent way by a business model on the web.  The only people getting rich off of Web 2.0 are the people at Google and other large companies.  Keen stated again that "None of these companies are employing professionals.  None are employing experts and people with real talent." 

Paul Duguid replied with his part of the talk.  He noted that Keen’s book is really about experts - not about amateurs.  Duguid notes that the experts aren't defending their turf as cultural producers, haven’t stepped up to the plate, and now want “us” to defend them.  Duguid noted that the first time he met Keen, he had wanted to record him for a podcast, Keen has a blog, Keen makes money off of the cult of the amateur.  The paradox, to Duguid, is that to Keen there is no money in the deal of Web 2.0, and that this is the problem.  [Keen later agreed with this].  Duguid poked fun at Keen as a self-confessed amateur who has made a living off of this subject, bashing Web 2.0, and yet using Web 2.0 at the same time to do that very thing.  Duguid doesn't believe that technology has just come along and laid things flat.  These traditional experts, and their avenues for expression, still exist.  They just need to defend then now for the first time in history. 

Duguid also discussed the problematic definition of "culture."  Keen typically bashes Lawrence Lessig and Duguid feels that both of them are more alike than they think: Lessig believes these technologies will help culture grow while Keen believes it will kill our culture.  To Duguid, neither argument really works.  Duguid cites a Benedictine monk who published a book about how the book was going to destroy the culture of the scholar.  We find ourselves in a circus defending the ideas at either end of the spectrum.  Do we really want to defend Clear Channel, Tower Records, Britannica, the RIAA, and advertisers?  These people have had “a stinking business model” for years.  Do we trust traditional advertisers more than "the new kind"?  Who is the “right” cultural gatekeeper?  The newspaper, as Keen keeps coming back to?  Should they be?  Duguid cited Keen's "language of moral panic."  Everyone is worried about losing a piece of the pie that is theirs. 

Duguid stated that he is dubious of Wikipedia as a research tool, and that it is asinine when it chooses to be, and useful as well--a mixture.  Keen says it's put together by idiots.  Duguid cited numerous examples of factual discrepancies in Keen's book where he gets information wrong, and Wikipedia actually gets it right.  One example: Duguid cited the part in the book where Keen talks about the Huxley quote about monkeys typing out the works of Shakespeare - and Duguid noted that Wikipedia gets the story right, that it never happened.  The many examples of data, cultural information, and simple facts from Keen's book where Wikipedia gets the information correct and Keen does not, were riotous to hear as a laundry list.  Duguid finished by calling Keen a simplistic technological determinist.

Keen responded that he's "just never good with details."  That he was "sloppy" with his book and that the strength of his book is not in the detail, but its ability to drive a conversation.  It's not an academic book.  It's a provocative book.  Keen says that the story of the book itself may be a good commentary on Web 2.0.  His initial book idea (Digital Vertigo) was rejected by an agent and he was told that he should write an anti-Web 2.0 book.  So he did.  He said, though, that it has become "a viable commercial enterprise."  But he's made money and a name out of it through intermediaries - professional publishers, professional marketers.  From his point of view, he makes money out of writing because he took the traditional path, and that’s the only way to do it to him, and so all is well.  He said that he particularly detests Lessig, and does not want to be lumped in with him.  The purpose of the book, Keen said, is to remind ourselves that we created technology, and think critically about how we use it culturally.  "Technology is not inevitable, it doesn't exist outside the humanistic abstract."  He said it's not a coincidence that this kind of technology came out of the libertarian northern California area – we elitist few.  He also refused the label as a "technological determinist." 

Duguid clarified that he wasn't originally looking for errors - he looked at examples of discussions of cultural figures specifically in the book, and that is where the mistakes were made.  He emphasized again the difficulty in determining what "cultural" means.  No one defines it.  Not Keen.  Not Lessig.  When we say the web affects culture, or that it is a cultural revolution, what do we mean?  Duguid again called Keen a technological determinist, that Keen proposes that Web 2.0 can only do one thing, that it can only destroy culture. 

It annoys Keen to blog, he says.  His blog is always by definition bad because he's not willing to give away good stuff for free.  He wants to be paid.  He published his first anti-Web 2.0 manifesto in a magazine.  He would not have put that on a blog for free – to him, because it came through a well-established magazine it means more. 

The moderator jumped in and cited his little local newsstand in San Francisco and its plethora of offerings of all sorts, levels of popularity, and audiences.  The same way, there are terrific blogs out there by economists, linguists, musicians, and other experts have something valuable to say and can do so without the traditional editorial intervention.  If you don't want to read the 5 million blogs by Illinois high school students you don't have to.  So, what's the problem?

Keen responded that quality is hard to define - that's the problem.  He said he envied academics - they are paid to be experts.  They have the extra time to publish their work.  From the perspective of the academics, this Web 2.0 economy is a good one.  The blogosphere is ideal for people who can make their money doing their research, not those with day jobs who end up giving away their expert content "for free" instead.  Keen says that he thinks that Web 3.0 will hold experts seizing control of the Web 2.0 publishing tools and putting themselves out there. 

Audience Questions
A gentleman said that the interplay between technology and culture is integral.  But one of Keen's core issues is that the creative class is becoming disenfranchised.  When was the creative class franchised?  It is a tiny part of the creative class who ever made a living off of their creativity.  Keen countered with the example of journalists.  The questioner still said that Keen's class of people getting screwed over by Web 2.0 is pretty small, and that these sweeping generalizations are not fair to make.  What is the value of the mainstream media?  Keen says it has a lot of value and that the Web 2.0 people say it's never fostered much talent or allowed a democratization of media expression.  Then he said the following: “Media is the vehicle for the distribution of quality information.  Media is not a vehicle for righting social wrongs.”  By leveling the playing field of the media, Web 2.0 proponents believe that social and cultural biases will all be righted.  Keen defended the media, especially the music business, as weeding out junky content.  That’s their point. 

Another questioner raised the issue that many of the "intellectual class" work with corporate interests, are influenced by others, work as consultants, and so how do we trust the intellectuals at all?  Keen says it's all very well to criticize the mainstream media, but what's the alternative?  An unmediated wild blogosphere?  He states that if the New York Times goes away, what are we left with...Google News?  Are we OK with that?  How are our "young people going to know what to trust, who to trust, for information about the world?"  Keen states that "we" are information and media literate - we know when something is garbage and when it isn't.  But young kids don't.   Then Keen actually said: "The YouTube generation is much less intelligent." 

Duguid replied that we shouldn't romanticize the past and preserve a failing business model.  Duguid cites the music business that did nothing to try to change and have now reaped what they sowed.  Why should we feel pity for their failed business model?  Keen went back again and again to the newspaper issue - we need to preserve newspapers, a mainstream media, a media we can trust.  A high quality media outlet should survive and generate revenue.  If it doesn’t, what then?  (Indeed, what then?  Godzilla?)

Another commenter noted that Web 2.0 didn't fail to democratize content creation, it is a thus-far failure to democratize the payment for content creation.  The content consumers outnumber the creators, and he sees a future where we pay for what we view in micropayments based on the market hierarchy as determined by users - better content gets better payments.  Keen responded that it is not okay to give away content - he's against what he calls "absurd charity."  Keen says that that Web 2.0 has created a permissive sense of content ownership and that everything becomes advertising and it's difficult to determine the difference between content and ads.  Web 2.0 has given a new generation of web users the misapprehension that they are entitled to free content.  They have gotten out of the habit of paying for content and never will again.

Another commenter noted a change in the photojournalism industry, where there is a generic sense of photo databases that all agencies use and draw "good enough" images for stories instead of using the original content of photojournalists.  What's happening with image banks is the end of the line for photojournalists, but there is a value slope and Web 2.0 is democratizing photojournalism, thereby decimating an entire profession.  Keen stated that traversing the hierarchy of the experts is something we should do and be willing to do to get our creations published.  The gatekeeper model is a good one in his mind.

The final commenter simply noted that what we need is to teach critical thinking skills to all our citizenry.  If weeding through content to find what is trustworthy is truly the goal, than that is the only answer.  Go libraries and teachers!

Sarah’s Commentary
Keen truly didn't seem to believe half, if not more, of what he was saying.  He was being sensationalist to be sensationalist, provoking to provoke, irritating to irritate.  I was disappointed.  After all of this guy's build-up, I would have expected a more thoughtful, intelligent, and rousing defense of his position.  Instead, he seemed half-bored.

I would challenge Keen to define “professionals.”  Does he mean “content experts with degrees and positions that make lots of money or have fancy titles”?  Is that a professional?  Web 2.0 companies all over the place hire professionals, including content professionals, and other types like librarians, IT analysts, programmers, you name it.  Who he means by “professionals” is very unclear.

I think that Keen’s assertion that Web 3.0 will be the “experts” and “professionals” taking over the reigns to the web is ludicrous.  Expert information may become easier to discern from the chaff, but I don’t think the role of the gatekeeper will once more be assumed by anyone.  The gatekeeper wasn’t needed – he got fired for a reason.  He’s not coming back.

Keen’s idea that the media is an outlet for “quality information” and not a way to address social ills made me physically sick.  The media can do what it wants, or what it is told to do, depending on the people in charge and the political climate.  The media can bolster a political regime, and that’s cool according to Keen, but if the populace wants to use the media as a way to get lesser known voices heard, people who have been traditionally disenfranchised, then to Keen we are a bunch of morons.  What a sad, sad thing to believe.  What a sad, sad statement of ignorance.

Keen’s comment about the YouTube generation also made me very angry.  To paint an entire generation with such broad paintstrokes, and to say they are stupid, is again ignorant at best.  How many generations have been saying that the one that follows it is less intelligent, less hard-working, less imaginative?  Come on…the web didn’t cause some massive shift in our children’s intelligence.  To claim that to be the case shows a lack of knowledge about not only studies that show the opposite, but also just plain general common sense.  I think that critical thinking skills are essential, as the last commenter pointed out, but adults aren’t necessarily media literate.  I would say that “information literacy” and “critical evaluation” skills are not age-based at all.  There are the good, the bad, and the ugly in every age group.

I enjoyed Duguid’s point about the absurdity and regression of trying to ask “society” to save a failing business model that fails because so far it hasn’t met society’s needs.  And do I feel badly for the big record companies or advertisers?  No.  If their model isn’t working with our new information exchange models, then the market will push them out for something that works better for the market.  That’s how the market works.  Long live the market.

The gentleman who raised the issue of micropayments and the shifting economic model was very interesting to me.  Keen seems to only care about money, so, there’s his answer.  It’s already happening in music with bands who start on MySpace being discovered by fans and given money to record an album, and then, and only then, being discovered by the big record labels.  Voluntary micropayments for websites, software, and open source goodies abound.  The model is shifting.

I unfortunately did not get to ask my question.  I wanted to talk about how the “making money off of your content” doesn’t always come from publishers and traditional gatekeeper avenues.   My own case is an example, where my blog started small and I wrote out of a sense of wanting to contribute to the community of libraries.  It slowly grew, and I wrote, and it grew more, and I now make money because of it - speaking engagements, being asked to write for journals, consulting, blog syndication in online subscription databases, etc.  Had there been no blog, I doubt that some of the publishing opportunities I’ve had, not to mention the speaking, ever would have happened.  And I know this to be the case for many librarians and IT professionals.  So, in the case of self-publishing, it doesn't un-do, or disallow, making a name for yourself or even money.  It actually lets you get away from the traditional publishing industry that may not look at you twice otherwise.

I also wanted to challenge Keen that it seems to be all about money for him, that creating content on a non-paid basis isn't worth it, and that his experience is not that of many people.   I would have cited the library biblioblogosphere as a key example of this.  Some of us care enough about what we do to create for the sake of sharing and for the sake of bettering our small slice of the world.