All Terrain Thinking

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Is cyberspace ruining society?

NO!, It Already Has and it will only get Worse.

Andrew Keen may just be the most hated man in cyberspace.

He's been called an elitist, a grump, a mastodon, a subtle-as-a-brick cynic, a mental prostitute of the establishment and the antichrist of Silicon Valley.

The venom is coming from tech lovers who hate Keen's new book, “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture.” In it, the British-born critic argues all the hype over how the Internet is bringing the world together is bogus.

Instead, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, blogs, Wikis and other user-created sites are dragging society down to the lowest common denominator and filling the world with blather, Keen writes.

Internet “amateurs” are stealing the work of professional journalists and artists and driving mainstream newspapers, television networks, record companies and other institutions out of business. And if we don't do something soon, Keen warns, disaster will follow.

Keen hasn't always been so negative. In the 1990s, he founded a Web start-up, audiocafe.com, which crashed and burned. Now, he's re-created himself as one of the leaders of the anti-Web backlash.

While bloggers pick apart his arguments online, Keen has been traveling the world selling his book and giving speeches as a rare contrarian in a world enamored with technology.

Keen was interviewed during a technology conference in New York City.

Are you a Luddite? Do you hate technology?

No. Absolutely not. I'm not a Luddite. And I don't think there's any evidence in my book that I am. I think that's something I've been painted as by some of my more reactionary critics.

I'm an Internet boy. I grew up on the Internet. I'm a pioneer of Internet companies, business models, technology and the media. I'm as addicted to the Internet as anyone. I have my BlackBerry, cells, three or four laptops.

The techno-Utopians, technophiles, whatever you want to call them – they can't accept the fact that one can be critical of technology and not be a Luddite. I'm a technophile and a skeptic at the same time. It's possible, and I think I prove it.

You argue that YouTube, MySpace, blogs and other sites are destroying society. But these sites give everyone a chance to find an audience for their art or their opinions. Isn't that the definition of democracy?

I'm opposed to pure democracy because I think it historically will always degenerate into ochlocracy – into mob rule. Aristotle understood that. The French and Russian revolutions are very good examples. Especially the French Revolution.

Pure democracy doesn't work. It results in chaos and the development of new elites. And the problem with the Internet is that the new elites are anonymous. So, you have this rise of what I would call an anonymous oligarchy on the Internet.

What's wrong with anonymity, with using a screen name instead of your real name when you're online?

I think there are two or three problems. Firstly, we don't live in Iran or China. There's no reason not to reveal who you are. I think it reflects a sort of psychosis, a problem. If you are not willing to reveal who you are, then what's the reason? If you're not going to be put in prison, are you ashamed of who you are? Are you ashamed of your views? . .

I spent some time with some Yahoo guys and senior people at the Yahoo Research Center in Berkeley. And they told me in their research they're finding that whenever a site is reliably authored by people where everybody knows who they are . . . the quality of the content, the stickiness, is significantly higher.

So, in business terms, anonymity fails because it results in lower-quality content. People don't hang around. It destroys the Internet for most people. Why would we go online to be insulted? Why would we go online and listen to crazy people screaming at one another and not even know who they are?

You criticize bloggers who clog up the Internet with posts about what they had for breakfast and trivial matters. Yet, you have a blog. And it's about you and your book. Are you being hypocritical?

I'm certainly not being hypocritical. I think I'm being very provocative in a sense. It gives me great satisfaction to be arguing against blogs, have a blog and be pointed out as this profound hypocrite.

The problem with the blogosphere is it assumes that the blogosphere or one's blog is the thing in itself. That that's what you have to sell. That's the mistake, in my opinion.

So, it's fine to have a blog if you've got something else – whether it's a movie, a book, a piece of music, a series of articles in newspapers. The blogosphere is a great vehicle for self-advertisement. But it's not much else. It doesn't represent a means to earn a living.

So, for pre-existing professional artists, creators, authors, journalists, it's actually an exciting vehicle, medium. But for other people, it isn't.

And that's why I call it a great seduction. Because it seduces these kids who think that they can become journalists or musicians – all they have to do is offer their content online. And that's not the case.

You say the Internet isn't inspiring real debate. Instead, it has become a place where we confirm what we already believe. What do you mean by that?

The problem I think in society generally is that people aren't talking to one another. There is less and less debate, which is one of the reasons why people are reading newspapers less and less. People are more and more confirmed in their opinions. They are, if you like, ideological, more radical. And so the Internet just confirms that.

The Internet is the place we go to confirm our opinions, to confirm our identity, to confirm our beliefs. It's not a medium that copes very well or very successfully with people who can't make up their mind . .

So, that's why the big success stories on the Internet are things like the Daily Kos (dailykos.com) and Town Hall (townhall.com). There is no debate there. People don't go to the Daily Kos if they're saying “I'm not sure if I'm a Democrat or a Republican.” You go to Daily Kos because you're a Democrat. You go to TownHall.com because you're a Republican.

Wikipedia – the online encyclopedia written and edited by users – is another of your favorite topics. What's your problem with that?

The problem with Wikipedia is there is no one determining when something is more important than something else. So, Wikipedia just reflects our own obsessive 24-hour news cycle. The entry on Pamela Anderson is as carefully footnoted and meticulously researched as the entry on Marie Curie or Joan of Arc.

Are we on the verge of an anti-Web backlash?

People who are defensive of technology, if they think I'm a Luddite, just wait. Just wait until the next generation of kids, who are going to react against these kids.

Because I guarantee you that we're in the '50s now. And the '60s are going to get very ugly when all these kids who grow up as children of the YouTube generation smash the computers.

Unless we make this medium more civil, more responsible, more valuable, there is going to be a huge Luddite reaction. And then I will seem like a techno-Utopian in comparison.

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