myRaganTV, a video site for corporate communicators, just posted an interview with Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture. I have to admit, I was only vaguely aware of Keen’s book and premise, which (if I gather correctly) is that Web 2.0 has shortcircuited the process by which the professional creative class (artists, editors, publishers, etc.) serve us up our culture. The argument goes that until the advent of blogs and YouTube, art and culture were forged by a process that was designed to filter out crap and only allow stronger cultural expressions to reach us on or radios, TVs, bookstores, etc.
I’m eager to read the book, but I think I already know my reaction, which is mixed. On the one hand, yes, there are metric tons of craptastic content on the Web. But, then again, what do you call the parade of top-40 radio and network-TV programming that the so-called professional class has been coming up with since the 1950s? Maybe Keen never had to watch shows like the Love Boat or listen to Kasey Casem. If he did, perhaps he’d be celebrating the diversity of artistic expression that only could have come about from the explosion of self-expression on the Web.
Like I said, I’ll have to read his book. But, sadly, it’ll go into my reading queue, which has grown noticeably over the past few years, um, ever since I started spending more time on blogs and watching YouTube.
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