The breakdown in deference and the rethinking of the role of expertise has been going on for a lot longer in our society than the internet has been a public phenomenon. It has not been caused by Web 2.0. What web 2.0 has done is to make the dialogue urgent.
We are in a phase of creative destruction and entrenched interests will try to justify their old business models but won't succeed. If Andrew Keen talked about creating a globally responsive media that served open democratic debate engaging the citizen and experts in a dialogue he would be a hero for me. It's sad because the tone rather than content of his argument that is flawed for me

Chris Yapp, Basingstoke, England

While I can sympathize with these views, I fear the expansion of the web 2.0 is not "threatening" the experts : it's just trying to fill in the hole left by the failure of the "experts". This being particuliarly true of the media, being more and more subservients to the Powers That Be rather than daring to denounce their abuses.

Talk about academics : true, their standards are much higher, they are peer-reviewed and so on, but one has to pay to be published, then pay to read the publication. And they're talking to each others ONLY, more and more : when only experts can read and understand other experts, where would you want not-experts to get their knowledge ?

Wikipedia need this expertise, and I believe than rather than fight against this movement, the experts should use and influence it. They have their own responsibility in this.

Blinking Spirit , Paris, France

Sabrina Messenger

It seems to me, that you would need to read article 19 again.

Keen is just using his right to free speech.

Best regards

Kim, Odense, Denmark

Maybe Andrew Keen needs to read Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

So that tells me that web 2.0 regardless of whether it "sucks" or not, belongs to ALL of us, not just those like Keen who think they are the ruling authority! So it's too late for Keen's regrets...and his complaints and whining. Why? Because the barn door has been opened, and he was in part responsible for opening it!

We so-called "amateurs" are not "killing" the Intenet...if anything, we are REVITALIZING it...…no matter how "embarassingly amateurish" we might appear as we find our voices and use them to accomplish this feat! He and other elitist snobs can't silent us... indeed we won't let them!

Sabrina Messenger, Corvallis, Oregon, USA

Status Quo. Status Quo, Status Quo.

If we listen to this guy, we wouldn't have allowed Bill Gates to found a company. We wouldn't have allowed UHF TV channels to bring different programming to our sets. We wouldn't have allowed a poor Japanese man named Honda to start producing motorcycles.

Hell, the Beatles would have never produced a record, and we'd all still be listening to Lawrence Welk.

Some people are scared of the future - some embrace it. Andrew Keen seems terrified that people might make up there own minds about what they like. It's too bad - he's going to miss a lot of interesting things.

Oh - and the "democratization" of content won't destroy the professional writer/singer/editor. It will however give them a far wider audience than they had before. I regularly read Chinese, Indian, and European newspapers now, sometime that would have been financially impossible a few years ago.

Wayne, Richmond Hill, Ontario

You can't shop at garage sales for everything.

Glenn, Orange County, California

As a middle aged print journalist who has recently migrated to a blog I have to agree with Andrew Keen. The blogosphere is a spiteful and malicious place peopled by unmannered anonymous losers. The blogosphere a threat to the print media? .....I don't think so.

David Bullard, Johannesburg, South Africa

I think the article have some important points, but is wrong regarding the music business being ruined and "the long tail".

For instance, if anyone is ruining the music business then it is themselves through stubbornness and believing that they are always right, never the customers (the customer is not always right, but definitely not always wrong). You can certainly also find musicians who believe in selling music online, ie. if music companies won't publish their music because it is "less popular".

There should be a balance - the web should not drive normal shops out of business, but what is wrong with selling niche products over the web? I think that is a very good thing for "cottage industries". I think a problem, which is just as important is that we are already signs of reduced choice and variety through companies buying companies and growing bigger and bigger and fewer and fewer.

Nikolas S. Andersen, Watford, England

Keen is just trying to gain some publicity through such ridiculous anti-Web 2.0 FUD and doomsaying.

Daniel, Kent, England

What Andrew Keen doesn't take into account is that all of these so called "amateurs" were already around _before_the internet; now it's just a much bigger and more easily accessed microphone than they had before.

Keen grew up in a generation where Hollywood and Recording Moguls put out works for the masses that they deemed were of superior quality; where the press elite were so restrictive on who they allowed into their fold to express their views that they shaped popular opinion with a single stroke. Not so anymore.

Certainly you cannot refute that many of those who now have a voice lack training, education, skills--that much is true. But there are those out there who are truly talented, who perhaps would have never had a microphone to begin with that are now more enabled and empowered than before.

I believe that this is the beginning, and ultimately the community will sort itself out. Keen is a fool for criticizing and not helping to steer the masses in a right direction.

R. King, Alexandria, VA

There are so many points I'd like to bring up about this review it makes my head spin, but I think this will sum up most of it:

"...with its rich ecosystem..."

I think that really hit the nail on the head, even if he didn't mean it that way!

Inaccuracies that are visible are much better than those which are hidden! (I'm looking at you corporate media)

Erik, Malmö, Sweden

So: The internet is frequently incorrect, biased and caters to the lowest common denominator, and that's a terrible change for the worst. Really.

The Sun has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the English speaking world.

R. Lee, sydney,

Maybe some web publications should learn lessons from the sciences and embrace the concept of "peer review". There are a huge number of new scientific publications, many of which are run with fairly small budgets. The basis of the reliability of the results is that they are not published unless the methodology and results are endorsed by acknowledged experts in the field - selected by the editors of the publication, and having recognized professional credentials. The reviewers do not get paid but they do an invaluable service to the scientific community. Furthermore scientific publications are ranked by citation index, that it how often other people cite your work. Maybe some of this could be adapted into web publications and there should be some system of credentials, for instance by endorsement / sponsorship or prior publication.

Pekka K, Turku, Finland

While this is true, with every gain you're going to have a loss of some sort, nothing ever goes away. Old models don't fall apart and disappear because a new technology came around.

When writing came alone it was vilified, print was cause to claim no one would experience things on their own, the fear was that they would assume any facts in these "books" were true and not test things or learn things on their own.

This is history repeating itself. You've got professionals on both sides claiming the web is good or the web is bad.

The web doesn't have an alignment. It is a tool, it is no more a source of good or evil than a wrench, and that is what people are failing to understand.

There are great examples of the web being used to point out errors in "traditional" modes of communication, the photoshopped bombing pictures that the AP ran come to mind, but then you do have things like fabricated feuds between Hillary and Obama (which sadly "traditional" media ran as news, whoops.)

George, Blair, USA/Pennsylvania

Keen"s World; free flat culture, he grew up wondering!
Where necessary, governments should intervene, as the Americans. Such a stellar intelect chap.... or not!
i will go with my fellow Columbian (British) Ice ko.
And have more faith in the general reader being able to sort wheat from chaff, regardless of publishing mode

GerwingR, Vancouver, Canada

I've not read the book, but I find the article unconvincing. As a writer I do a lot of research on the web - and yes, wikipedia - and I get access to a wider source of articles and books that allows me to cross reference. This is much more than I could have accessed in the past relying on just bookshops. This article assumes the total inability of ordinary people to sort out the wheat from the chaff. We do not need Web 2.0 to put dubious material into the public domain. Bookshops have been selling all sorts of dross (in the guise of diet books, self help books, ghost and mystery books, revisionist history books and the Da Vinci Code, to name just a few) for years. And television is hardly leading the way with cutting edge intellectualism. What this article describes is not so much the problem of the internet than the decline of aspects of society that underwrite the whole system. I cannot see how more Net control can reverse decades of intellectual decline. Barking up the wrong tree.

Rob, Shrewsbury, UK

RE: Ice ko, Clearbrook, BC, Canada and Alarmism

Hey, wait a second. You have not even *read* the book yet. It's not out yet.

Tyrone, Boston,

Keen may have a point about how the mass of mediocrity is overshadowing great works, but that argument itself is overshadowed by his ridiculous doomsaying. Saying that the Long Tail doesn't work on the web any more than in the past, and comparing it to Pol Pot? Claiming the death of civilization if governments do not clamp down on free speech? There are good ways to make his point, but whining about how people go to a free encyclopedia heavy on current events over an expensive classical one is not really the way to go about it.

Nathaniel Gulick, Austin, Texas, USA

Keen is clearly onto something in these matters, as are many other writers. But, as this review reflects, his work tends to the overwrought and overstated, replete with prophecies of doom that convey over-the-counter rather than expert analysis. It thus verges on the kind of mediocrity he criticizes, further begging the question of whether new modes of publishing cause of the problem he discusses or simply magnify it . There has always been a lot of chaff out there from 'credentialed' observers publishing in traditional ways. Keen and his alarmist cohort should perhaps have more faith in the general reader being able to sort wheat from chaff, regardless of publishing mode.

Ice ko, Clearbrook, BC, Canada

How true this is...and as a university student (mechanical engineering) it is also the way universities and their students are heading. A 'mass production machine' of the poorly educated, OHP copying/note collecting in order to for fill a last minute deadline/exam cram.
An impersonal system, with ever growing applicants, sees that this goes unnoticed when busy lecturers mark coursework; the short term memory is easily utilised when we are taught simply to pass exams rather than the deeper understanding of delicate detail.
Worryingly this generation of proffessionals will soon be upon us.
But thats all fine as long as we get the 'university life experience' hey!!!

A.Young, Bury St. Edmunds, England

Finally, someone willing to speak out against the web 2.0 "nirvana".Whilst the new, revolutionised web brings great advantages, as Mr Keen says there are also drawbacks. People can only expect "free" content for so long before nobody wishes to create anything due to lack of incentive.

Jason, Gosford, Australia

I think what Keen is really addressing here is an economic issue. The discussion of music downloads and Britannica Online highlight the problem. Why pay for information when one can get it free? But as Keen stated, it’s not really free. One has to have the resources to get good information, and that costs.

I myself have found Wikipedia useful for the types of casual information I get from it. But I would not use it as a reference for a doctoral thesis.

Information is a tool like any other. It takes responsible people to use tools wisely. A responsible person would never take as gospel information from an anonymous source. A responsible person understands like any other tool, not all information is of the quality.

As tools evolve, so must the people who use them. Hopefully we're up to the task.

Byron Dowell, Charlotte, USA/NC

Does anyone else notice the irony of an article lamenting the proliferation of uninformed comment in web 2.0 asking for our own uniformed comments?

Jonathan, London, UK

The web also provides alternative channels for sharing expertise. Looking at the 40 blogs in my feed reader, most are written by people with real expertise in their field: economics blogs written by academic economists, IT blogs written by programmers, etc.

I myself run a website (moneyterms.co.uk) which is an online reference work in my own field. If you want something more dependable than Wikipedia, you can usually find someone like me providing it.

It looks like my site will give me a decent, if unspectacular, return on the time and money I am putting into it. I admit this is partly because I chose to live in a low cost country while working on it, but I think it would have been financially worthwhile in any case.

Old media also has its faults, I find plenty of errors in the the press and there is no effective way of commenting on or correcting them. In addition, the web has given us the huge advantage of making experts and key sources (such as academic papers) more accessible.

Graeme Pietersz, Colombo, Sri Lanka

The mediocre content wins because it is easier to access or cheaper. However if you can convince everyone that there is value in reading the truths then the authors will have truly won.

Paul Simon is probably not against "Web 2.0" but against the way it is being used by un-talented, bored idiots.

It will hopefully all come home to roost one day when people actually realise that whatever is published on the internet should always be taken with a pinch of salt.

Jono Taylor, Bristol, UK

I found the ideas put forward in this article taken from the book, The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen, disturbing and flawed; to quote:

“web 2.0” is killing our culture, assaulting our economy and destroying time-honoured codes of conduct.”

What “culture”? What codes of conduct? Compared to the traditional press and TV the Internet is infinitely more cultured and inclusive and interactive. The article states:

“The content uploaded by users is derided as “embarrassingly amateurish music, unreadable poems, essays and novels.”

This might be true about a lot of stuff on the Internet, but if you don’t like it – just go to another website- in the same way you would turn off the TV or turn the page in your newspaper. What is so bad about people creating rubbish art? We can’t all be Picasso or Shakespeare, so what should we do? Sit in on our sofas watching Big Brother? Yeah- that’s going to create a better society isn't it!

Shona, Seville, Spain

What do we expect- we are living in an age where being famous is an end in its self, nobody listens anymore as they are too busy telling everybody their opinion, and kids have to be taught to tiock the right boxes in exams not to understand the ideas behind them.

I've always said that a PC is really useful when you take it out of the box and turn it on and start working on it. However as soon as you plug it into the phone line it goes sour.

MGB, Carmarthen, Wales

But Gorge Orwell was not describing the totalitarianism of the crowd, he was describing the terrifying totalitarianism of the state, and the total control the state had over information (and I for one have found Wikipedia to be a fantastic and brilliant source of information, despite its flaws!)

It is interesting that the article referred to George Orwell because this article has a lot to do with class politics. With the Internet everyone has a chance to join and some “experts” don´t like it. The “monkeys” should know our place and not fool ourselves into thinking we can write poetry and have an opinion about anything!

The experts have enjoyed their comfortable position in society and have tended not to rock the boat, well now the boat is rocking whether they like it or not. Their treasured position in society with the power to tell us what to think and to control us is perhaps growing weaker.

Shona, Seville, Spain

If the world the “experts” created is coming to an end, I for one do not mourn it. They haven't done a very good job in promoting culture, truth or in fostering human happiness!

In the old days, before newspapers and TV we were all amateurs- amateur singers, violin players, story tellers, dancers, philosophers- were we less cultured then? Then in the present day media-fuelled culture of celebrity, football and reality TV? Somehow I doubt it. Perhaps Mr Keen would prefer to see amateurs returning to their position as “proles”.

To finish, I found Mr Keen’s suggestion that government should intervene regarding Internet content sinister and hair-raising. Perhaps he should re-read George Orwell's "1984” and he might undersdtand what I’m talking about.

Shona, Seville, Spain

The Internet encourages people to be active rather than passive. If you write a totally crap poem, you as an individual have done something more worthwhile than watching Eastenders.

As for books- well if TV didn't kill them off, I guess there’s nothing to worry about.

The article states:
“A politician can avoid dealing with ordinary citizens but would be a fool to refuse calls from representatives of the press and TV news. If traditional news-gathering disappears, who will hold politicians to account?”

Really? It seems to me that this statement is totally backwards. When a politian respects a journalist, it is because of what the journalist will tell the ordinary citizen, which is who the polititian really fears and it is only power the journalist has.

To say the Internet will cause traditional newgathering to disapaear is hyterical nonsense. Newpapers will survive on the Net and probably in print. Perhaps the Net will revitalise them, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Shona, Seville, Spain

The days where newspapers held politicians to account are well and truly over, if they ever existed. Newspapers have their own agendas and interests to look out for and casting them in a light of holier than thou, is cynical in the extreme. The tabloid press bombards us with vomit inducing content and the “higher” newspapers tow the line and fail to give the public the information they deserve. We only need to think back to their coverage in the run-up to the war in Iraq… The people have been misinformed and controlled by the traditional forms of media ever since it was created.

This article itself is misinforming and manipulates information. It says:
“Wikipedia is premised on a contrary theory of truth that would have seemed familiar to George Orwell: if the crowd says that two plus two equals five, then two plus two really does equal five.”
But Gorge Orwell was not describing the totalitarianism of the crowd, he was describing the terrifying totalitarianism of the state.

Shona, Seville, Spain

Keen is being rather naive - although he is getting good publicity for his book. It should be obvious that, when we make it possible for everyone to contribute and be heard, 99 percent and upwards of the material will be mediocre at best. So what? All that is needed is mechanisms for separating signal from noise (although we all have different ideas of what is signal and what is noise). I expect a hierarchy of brokers to emerge on the Web. We already have many reviewers who tell us which sites and blogs are good or bad. Eventually I expect there to be a niche for "reviewers of reviewers". One way or another, each of us can set up an excellent array of information and opinion sources. The biggest problem is greed: one can easily try to read far more than there is time for. By the way, I think Wikipedia beats Britannica (or Americana as it should be called) hands down. People like Keen fail to mention that Wikipedia contains far, far more solid information than Britannica.

Tom Welsh, Basingstoke,

I find it hard to share the author's concern when a study reported by this paper last year found that Wikipedia was, on average, no more error-prone than the Encyclopedia Britannica.

matt, hinterthal,

to "stiffo, st helier",
Might I suggest some due diligence to aviod further embarassing statements? Both the author and Mr. Keen have "adapted" (actually, evolved would have been the appropriate term), they are utilizing the web to publish material on a daily basis.
Additionally, if you would have read the ENTIRE article, you would have noted the following statement

"We must choose between sites such as Wikipedia, where the cult of the anonymous amateur prevails, and the newer alternative Citizendium, which aims to improve on Wikipedia’s model by adding “gentle expert oversight” and requiring contributors to use their real names."

As Ayn Rand said, "There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist".

Peter Naegele, cleveland , ohio, usa

Look. Now we are all merging, we are all comunicating. GLOBALISATION, This is a step of evolution, and you are the correctors even me, that PART OF THE HISTORY that enables this new system that is forthcoming in about 20 or 30 years. DONT YOU REALIZE HOW WAS In 1996 ?. HOW WAS THE INTERNET. So amazingly THANKS to the amateur this is how it is now BECoSE THERE IS MORE AMATEUR THAN PROFFESSIONAL., soy maybe if you think more this AMATEURS in a future and their sons and grand daughters will have each one of them A NEW VERSION of this dynamic system. the new cellphones, wireless internet, palms, laptops (growth in the last 3 years), think how EXPONENTIALLY this devices are being sold and used. Even refrigerators have internet. We are passing throug a change and even i dont like it. im 25 years old, but i know for shure that in the future you need to conect and is up to you if you filtrate or not the data you resive. The school doesnt teach how to administrate`` your data´´THATS IMPORTANT

Jonathan, Lima, Perú

As a trained teacher of Transcendental Meditation and a practioner of same for many years, I was dismayed by the article on the subject that I read in Britannica. A lot of it simply wasn't true. And I'm talking about facts, not opinion. Neither was the article attributed to anybody. Nor were there any references to further reading. My advice is: don't believe anything you read unless you can verify it from other sources, or from your own experience. I dare say there are millions of internet users who already know that.

Frank Crowther, Haslingden, Lancashire

In the days when the web was just hitting its stride, USENET was already old. As more and more people got their free AOL CDs, the idiots tried to stage an onslaught on that.

Fortunately, those who were already established in those positions of informal authority accorded to those one respects had enough wit to rebut, criticise and insult the idiots in an amusing enough way that they thought twice before exposing their stupidity to the public a second time.

Perhaps Web 2.0 just takes itself too seriously. After all, it _should_ be easy to laugh at the fact that most bloggers appear too stupid even to turn on their spelling checkers. Or that the article on "Doctor Zhivago" on Wikipedia was written by someone who has apparently seen the film but not read the book.

Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK

well. the author seems to come in defense of a certain status quo. maybe, maybe, all those paid sites, experts and professionals should understand that their package is no longer appealing. learn from the others and adapt. do not threaten us with your extinction. thats your problem.

stiffo, st helier,

Bravo! It is refreshing to hear somebody finally say this... I am a teacher who finds crass errors in the written work I am submitted every other day. Not only am I the teacher, the killjoy, but nowadays I am also the old fogey who doesn't believe everyhthing she sees on Wikipedia! And worse again, who dares to question it!

Patricia Walsh, madrid, madrid

Keen is clearly onto something in these matters, as are many other writers. But, as this review reflects, his work tends to the overwrought and overstated, replete with prophecies of doom that convey over-the-counter rather than expert analysis. It thus verges on the kind of mediocrity he criticizes, further begging the question of whether new modes of publishing are the cause of the problem he discusses or simply magnify it . There has always been a lot of chaff out there from 'credentialed' observers publishing in traditional ways. Keen and his alarmist cohort should perhaps have more faith in the general reader being able to sort wheat from chaff, regardless of publishing mode.

Ice ko, Clearbrook, BC, Canada

/‘if the crowd says that two plus two equals five, then two plus two really does equal five.’/

This made me laugh. I suppose that just renaming the number four, and every number shifts over one.

Silly? Yes! And I dare say not something a crowd would do, yet the experts would;

On my PC my RAID card has a ‘port 0’ as the first SATA port. Not ‘Port 1’ for port 1, oh no, the experts decided that Port 1 should be port 0, Port 2 is Port 1, and Port 3 is Port 2 and so on. In computers the zero is often a one.

Experts have lots knowledge but not much in the way of common sense or wisdom (or intelligence!). The problem most have with experts is that they (experts) are willing to share their opinions but not their knowledge. They like to tell you what to think, not empower you to think for yourself.

So experts: stop being lazy and get your arse in gear and argue your case! Or are we to take it that we should just take your word for it and follow you like sheep?

M

Mark, London, London