A few months ago, I penned a mega book review about the growing divide between “Internet optimists and pessimists.” I noted that the Internet optimists — people like Chris Anderson, Clay Shirky, Yochai Benkler, Kevin Kelly, and others — believe that the Internet is generally improving our culture, economy, and society for the better. They [...]
[Note: I updated this discussion and chart in a subsequent essay. See: "Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology’s Impact on Society."] A number of very interesting books have been released over the past year or two which debate how the Internet is reshaping our culture and the economy. I’ve [...]
In a previous essay, I critiqued Andrew Keen’s thesis that our culture was better off in the age of scarcity than it is in today’s world of media and cultural abundance. In this essay, I want to make a few comments about his latest anti-Web 2.0 rant regarding how, in addition to destroying art and [...]
Andrew Keen is the web’s favorite whipping boy these days, and in some ways he has it coming. His latest book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, is an anti-all-things-Web 2.0 screed. Keen lambastes “Internet democracy” (specifically the Wiki model of collaborative creation) and decries the rising tide of [...]