PICNIC07: Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur

This is in response to David Weinberger's earlier talk.

Andrew: David is a philosopher and marketer; his talk was a philosopher selling the web in a seductive way. I don't agree with a lot of what he said. The issue we disagree with on complexity; he says "we want more complexity; complexity is interesting".

He's mixing media with the world; what he wants is for media to reflect the world, but I don't think it should. Media shouldn't trivialise the world, but communicate it in a way we all understand; the Internet today doesn't do this, it creates complexity and confusion. The job of gatekeepers in traditional media is to simplify things. Do you think media should reflect the world?

Talent is scarce, as are resources. Good journalists have both the ability to do their job, and the ability to devote their time to it. Amateurs don't have this.

[...trailed into an interesting, but difficult-to-blog, argument...]