Last semester I read some of the reviews on Amazon.com of Keen's book and was curious to see what all the fuss was about. I was looking forward to reading this book and it was an "easy" read in that I read it all in less than two days. What a surprise to learn that Keen was actually ever in favor of web technologies because he seems like such a fanatic the other way now. Maybe he is like those ex-smokers who are now fanatical about anyone at all smoking. If I were someone coming into this material "cold," this book would completely turn me off from learning the positive things about these new web technologies.
Keen's ramblings made me think of a bitter old man (but I don't think he's too old) who has nothing better to do than whine and complain about the world coming to an end and the demise of the good old days of vinyl records and printed hardcopies of newspapers. G.W. Bush fans should be thrilled -- it's not "W's" fault after all that our country is so screwed up; it's the fault of all the evil geek geniuses who created blogs and Web 2.0 technologies and the idiots who use them. Whew! I was worried.
While I found the book easy to read and somewhat humorous, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone without a big caveat -- it is the slightly insane ranting and rambling of someone with some bizarre agenda.
The section of the book on the demise of the record store seemed go on and on and on. Same thing with newspapers. Yes, records were fun to thumb through in the store, and newspapers are good for lining bird cages, but I hardly think that digital downloads of music and news is the end of the world as we know it. Actually, I think this could have been a much shorter book if Keen had not repeated himself so much.
Compared to Shirky's book, which was all sunshine and light about Web 2.0 technologies, Keen's book is the direct opposite. I find Keen's book more of an example of ethics in technology. In fact, I plan to review it for one of my other classes on Ethics in Adult Education. I think it can be a useful tool in that area if for no other reason than to get people to think before they put private information out there for anyone to see and use (and abuse). I also found it useful as a tool to get my teenage daughter to understand some of the "dangers" she exposes herself to by using Facebook and other social networking sites. So, all in all, the book has its purposes I suppose.
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ReplyDeleteI'm trying to post for a second time. I keep getting them erased. I guess I have to set up my wordpress account first each time. Who knows.
I generally agree with the above. I fail to see the connection between Keen and Bush the Lesser and don't care for either bandit political parties. It must be remembered that Clintone ranted against the internet after OK probably moreso than Bush the Lesser.
Politics of bandit parties aside, I think that the demise of papers, record companies, the major media, movie companies and everything that Keen is scared of is a good thing. The fact is, if Keen looked at history, that papers have been on the decline for about 100 years, well before the internet. AM radio was totally gone until Clintone's dreaded talk radio brought it back (so things can make comebacks). The last 20 years of music have been dreadful, and this stuff was put out by the "expert" record companies. TV news has been nothing but propaganda since and including Walter Cronkite (yes his voice sounded trusting but it was crap). Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather Biased spouted the same news each night and had the same drug commercials at the same time, and did all the news at the same time, ad nauseum. Movies today merely repeat better movies or books done in the past. Now, all we have left is reality TV and comic book movies. The cult of the expert has failed!
The only common concern I have is the sometimes slanderous activities in Wikipedia. I do not share Shirky's idea that it is self-corrective. I know personally of more than a few errors right now in Wikipedia. If I correct them the more powerful forces will change them back. Any truly, truly difficult theme in Wikipedia ultimately is controlled by the power brokers.
Of course, this is no different than the mainline media of the past. I don't know the answer here and went to the ridiculous Citizendium and found it no better in controversial areas than Wikipedia so Keen's "solutions" don't look to swift. And does anyone think Joost is a positive alternative to YouTube? If so, how?
Lesli, I had a similar perception of the book. I found myself asking "so what?" many times while reading. I don't get how Keen aquired this appocalyptic view of Web 2.0. A hidden agenda as you said might explain it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I kinda enjoyed the chapter on Big Brother which I read last night. But there are some speculations in that too. Olivia
Keen was pessimistic about the applicatin of the Internet on entertainment industry. He saw the shut down of record store, but ingore the fact that consumer can use the Internet to obtain the products they want in a totally legal way. Eg, last week I happened to be crazy about the movie "Breakin'", but since I have no car, I could not access to any record/movie store, nor could I garanteed to find it. But I found the product on both amazon and ebay. Did Keen consider how my gas saving and efficiency was the advancement of the society?
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