Tomorrow is the official on-sale date for Andrew Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur," but the book is already getting lots of attention. Keen, a writer, and failed Internet entrepreneur, spends 200 pages attacking the rise of the "amateur" and the harm -- economic, social, cultural and political -- these amateurs will cause. Without "standards," without "taste," without "institutions" to "filter" good from bad, true from false, the Internet, Keen argues, is destined to destroy us.
There's much in the book that even we amateur-o-philes should think about. How can we build trust into the structures of knowledge the Internet is enabling (Wikipedia, blogs, etc.)? How can make sure the contribution adds to understanding rather than confuses it? These are hard questions. And as is true of Wikipedia at each moment of every day -- there is more work to be done.
But what is puzzling about this book is that it purports to be a book attacking the sloppiness, error and ignorance of the Internet, yet it itself is shot through with sloppiness, error and ignorance. It tells us that without institutions, and standards, to signal what we can trust (like the institution (Doubleday) that decided to print his book), we won't know what's true and what's false. But the book itself is riddled with falsity -- from simple errors of fact, to gross misreadings of arguments, to the most basic errors of economics.
So how could it be that a book criticizing the Internet -- because the product of a standardless process where nothing is "vetted for accuracy" (as he says of Wikipedia) -- could itself be so mistaken, when it, presumably, has been "vetted for accuracy" and was only selected for publication because it passed the high standards of truth imposed by its publisher -- Doubleday?
And then it hit me: Keen is our generation's greatest self-parodist. His book is not a criticism of the Internet. Like the article in Nature comparing Wikipedia and Britannica, the real argument of Keen's book is that traditional media and publishing is just as bad as the worst of the Internet. Here's a book -- Keen's -- that has passed through all the rigor of modern American publishing, yet which is perhaps as reliable as your average blog post: No doubt interesting, sometimes well written, lots of times ridiculously over the top -- but also riddled with errors. Keen's obvious point is to show those with a blind faith in the traditional system that it can be just as bad as the worst of the Internet. Indeed, one might say even worse, since the Internet doesn't primp itself with the pretense that its words are promised to be true.
So lighten up on poor Mr. Keen, folks. He is an ally. His work will help us all understand the limits in accuracy, taste, judgment, and understanding shot through all of our systems of knowledge. The lesson he teaches is one we should all learn -- to read and think critically, whether reading the product of the "monkeys" (as Keen likens contributors to the Internet to be) or books published by presses such as Doubleday.
I've outlined some of these errors in the Extended Entry below. I've also placed that enumeration on a wiki, and I invite everyone to help construct the The Keen Reader -- listing and demonstrating the errors in his book, so others can see quite clearly just how brilliant a self-parody this book is.
