Innovation Reading Circle
> Innovation Agenda
> Overview
The Innovation Reading Circle aims to help develop theory around innovation through rich, high-level and well-informed public discussion around key and related texts and discourses... [Read on in Objectives]
> Last Event
05: Amateurism, culture and excellence
> Titles
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy Andrew Keen (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007) [UK edition]
Andrew Keen is a UK-born digital media entrepreneur and Silicon Valley insider whose popular writing about culture, media, and technology has been featured in many newspapers and magazines including The Weekly Standard, BusinessWeek, Esquire, and the Guardian. He published his own weblog, and hosts the acclaimed podcast show, AfterTV. [Full biography on author’s site.] [Profile on Wikipedia.]
> Notices
28 June 2007 See reflections on the event in a blog post from POLIS director Charlie Beckett and a response and reflection by Ian Jindal. Event write up to follow.
We are grateful to Moving Brands for hosting this event. Established in 1998, Moving Brands employs multi-platform storytelling to inform its approach to branding. (See examples in its showreel.) It was ranked among top 10 UK Corporate Identity design agencies and 23 overall in Design Week’s top 100 consultancy survey 2007.
> Took place
June 26 2007
> At
Moving Brands, 59 Charlotte Road [not 7-8 Charlotte Road], Shoreditch, London EC2A 3DH
Points for discussion
Some of the questions that we plan to discuss include:
- Is there a crisis of content, or has the history of past media proliferation demonstrated that good culture will out (see Jeff Jarvis on the impact of the remote control)?
- Keen talks about the ‘structural crisis of much of contemporary mainstream media institutions’. What might be the causes of this crisis? Are they to do with economics and business models, the challenges of change, social and cultural trends, or is it a politically-driven crisis? Did this crisis pre-date the rise of ‘Web 2.0’?
- How might we judge the economic impact on established industries of the phenomena Keen describes (see Lawrence Lessig’s notes on the piracy fallacy in his response to Keen)?
- What are the causes of the changing attitude to news vs opinion vs celebrity? Why did mass culture end (for instance the multi-platinum album)?
- Why is amateurism celebrated over expertise in the media and communications sectors (as well as in other areas such as innovation)? (See James Harkin in the FT.)
- Are we developing a culture of narcissism (see Keen’s CBS News essay [link goes to 2nd screen])? Why do people want to publicly express themselves more today? Is this part of the cause of the proliferation of content online? To what extent is the Internet allowing likemindedness to proliferate (see Observer article)?
- What is wrong with cross-linking, tagging and annotating articles (Keen on Kevin Kelly, p116)?
- If the communicatees know more than the communicator, should the latter not take advantage of this?
- Are we witnessing a growth in cultural plagiarism?
- The democratisation of power is generally considered to be a good thing. Should the democratisation of media and communications not be regarded in the same way?
- Are elite artists and an elite media industry symbiotic? Should the expert be defended against the anonymous amateur? Or do they complement one another?
- Is the rise of amateurism a product of technological developments, or a driver of them?
- What solutions does Keen propose? Regulation? Remove anonymity? Restrict access to certain groups of users?
- Do we need more innovation in our ‘cultural products’, around forms that are of the medium, and that inspire higher cultural achievements among amateurs and experts?
Background reading, listening and viewing
On 7 June the FT hosted an Ask the expert debate with Keen [paid sub may be required]
Ask the expert Q&A with Andrew Keen, Financial Times, June 8 2007
Enough! The Briton who is challenging the web's endless cacophonyObserver, April 29, 2007 [Summary in shared bookmark]
Rubbish piles up in the dead end of Cyburbia James Harkin, Financial Times, May 4 2007 [Summary in shared bookmark]
Web 2.0 Is Reminiscent Of Marx Andrew Keen, CBS News, February 15, 2006 [Summary in shared bookmark]
Response from Clay Shirky Many-to-Many: What are we going to say about "Cult of the Amateur"?, May 24, 2007
Response from BuzzMachine: Snobs.com, Jeff Jarvis, February 18th, 2006
Response from Lawrence Lessig: Keen’s “The Cult of the Amateur”: BRILLIANT!
Video: Andrew Keen and Charles Leadbetter were involved in a debate on Newsnight on the evening of Tuesday 5 June. (The video is now available.) You can also read an entry on the Newsnight site which includes extracts from the book and comments from readers/viewers.
Video: Andrew Keen presents at the Authors@Google programme on June 07, 2007
Reviews
Book information and review excerpts on the UK publisher’s site
Editorial Reviews on Amazon.com
Interviews
Virtueel Platform – Cultuur 2.0 Interview with Andrew Keen, by Bram Alkema [On Google Video]
If you have queries about the event please email Nico Macdonald