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Andrew Keen in 2007

Andrew Keen (born circa 1960[1]) is a British-American entrepreneur and author. He is particularly known for his stridently expressed concerns about Web 2.0's undermining effect on culture and the authority of experts.

Contents

Life

Keen was born in Hampstead, North London.[2] He earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of London and then studied at the University of Sarajevo. He has earned a master's degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, studying under Ken Jowitt.

Keen has taught at Tufts University, Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts.[3]

He currently lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.[4]

Career

Keen's Silicon Valley career began in 1995, with the founding of audiocafe.com,[5] which received funding from Intel and SAP. The firm folded in January 2000.[6] After the demise of audiocafe.com, Keen worked at Pulse 3D, SLO Media, Santa Cruz Networks, Jazziz Digital, Pure Depth and AfterTV, which he founded in 2005.[6][7]

Criticism of Web 2.0

Keen currently writes about media on his site thegreatseduction.com, which redirects to his blog. Keen also produces a podcast on AfterTV. His book The Cult of the Amateur, which is critical of free, user-based information-gathering Web sites such as Wikipedia, was published on June 5, 2007, by Doubleday Currency.[8]

On August 16, 2007, Keen appeared on The Colbert Report to talk about the book. When called an elitist, he replied, "What's wrong with that?". When asked by Colbert if the internet was worse than the Nazis, Keen's response was that "even the Nazis didn't put artists out of work."[9]

In The Weekly Standard, Keen wrote that Web 2.0 is a "grand utopian movement" similar to "communist society" as described by Karl Marx. He stated it "worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer. It suggests that everyone — even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us — can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves. Web 2.0 'empowers' our creativity, it 'democratizes' media, it 'levels the playing field' between experts and amateurs. The enemy of Web 2.0 is 'elitist' traditional media." He describes Free Culture proponent Lawrence Lessig as an "intellectual property communist",[10] whom he "particularly detests".[11]

Keen discusses often-overlooked problems with participatory technology. He describes the internet in amoral terms, saying it is a mirror of our culture. "We see irreverence, and vitality, and excitement. We see a youthfulness. But we also see, I think, many of the worst developments in modern cultural life, and, in particular, I think we see what I call digital narcissism, this embrace of the self. It's Time magazine's person of the year for last year, was you."[12]

References

  1. ^ Saracevic, Alan T. (October 15, 2006). Debate 2.0 / Weighing the merits of the new Webocracy. San Francisco Chronicle (“Age: 46”)
  2. ^ Keen, Andrew presentation at Mahalo.com 2007-03-27
  3. ^ Keen, Andrew. Interview. Amateur Internet. 2007-06-07. Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
  4. ^ Balicki, Robert (February 21, 2007).Blogging Berkeley. The Daily Californian
  5. ^ Andrew Keen bio
  6. ^ a b "Andrew Keen - .net magazine". http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/discover-interview/andrew-keen. Retrieved 2008-01-03.  
  7. ^ About AfterTV
  8. ^ Keen, Andrew (2007). The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World is Assaulting Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values. Doubleday Currency, ISBN 978-0385520805
  9. ^ Stephen Colbert (2007-08-16). "The Colbert Report, Andrew Keen". Comedy Central. http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=91639. Retrieved 2008-04-16.  
  10. ^ Keen, Andrew (May 16, 2006). Web 2.0; The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It's worse than you think. The Weekly Standard
  11. ^ Keen, Andrew; Paul Duguid, Geoff Nunberg (2008-03-12). Is the Web a Threat to Our Culture?. University of California at Berkeley School of Information, Distinguished Lecture Series Debate. http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/podcast/?p=28. Retrieved 2008-03-20.  
  12. ^ New Book Looks at the Internet's Impact on American Life, PBS Online Newshour

Further reading








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