I've been meaning to post about a number of events that unfolded last week but am only now getting round to it.
First up was the Observer's story last Sunday (29 April 2007) about Andrew Keen, the British guy living in Silicon Valley who has published a book about how the internet - and more specifically what some pople refer to as Web 2.0 - is:
"destroying culture, ruining livelihoods and threatening to make consumers of new media regress into 'digital narcissism'."
Keen's argument is proponded in his new book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy and basically runs that in the future, culture will be reduced to either UGC from self-obsessed wannabes or corporate advertising masquerading as UGC.
This story got on my nerves as it's the kind of prediction that traditional media outlets love - "ooh, a bit of internet-bashing" but more importantly it doesn't take a deeper look at the evidence showing us how the web is really developing.
Look at the evidence. The Observer writes about Keen's "dystopian vision":
"As the internet grows, so do reports of faked identities and stalking on social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, deliberately misleading entries on Wikipedia, virtual vandalism in online world Second Life and accusations that YouTube is a forum for either copyright infringement or mind-numbing videos of skateboarding cats."
What this actually proves is that the internet is becoming socially and culturally more embedded in real life. Fake id, stalking, lying, vandalism and skateboarding cats have been around for as long as mankind - although maybe not skateboarding cats.
Then there's Keen's assertion that:
"At the current rate ... by 2010 there will be more than 500 million blogs, 'so dizzyingly infinite that they've undermined our sense of what is true and what is false, what is real and what is imaginary'."
This pretty much overlooks Heather Green from Businessweek's discovery that blog growth is slowing and crystalizing around a core of established blogs. So a future where we can't tell real from imaginary looks unlikely.
Keen is also worried that new media is threatening to make us regress to digital narcissism. So it' a good job he's here to prevent it happening by... er... becoming a cause-celebre that promotes his new book through not one, but three blogs [hat-tip Fiona Blamey].
Then on Tuesday came the Digg Revolution. I won't add to the reams already written about this except to say that it marks a significant demonstration of the power online communities have acquired. I can only think of one other example like this - albeit with much less significance. But as the wisdom or otherwise of the crowd grows I would advise organisations to start considering how their operations could be affected. As Antony Mayfield eloquently puts it:
"You can't keep secrets in open networks. Adjust your business and marketing models early to avoid disappointment, please."
Happily the week ended with a piece about the Andrew Keen story on BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme. Although a lot of the sensationalist rot was repeated in the programme, Leeds University's Professor of Political Communication, Stephen Coleman, came to the rescue with a reasoned and thankfully rational argument for the continued development of society and cultrue through the internet.
The even better news is that the package can be heard again using the BBC's 'Listen again' feature.
The real reason I've put these events into a post is that I am convinced they all add up to something greater. I haven't worked it out yet but hopefully will get a second to think about it all further and come up with a more original post this week. Hopefully...
Technorati tags: Observer; Andrew+Keen; Digg; wisdom+of+the+crowd; BBC; Radio+4; Broadcasting+House
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