The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube and the rest of today's user-generated media are killing our culture and economy

(Paperback, 2nd edition)

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Description

A new, updated edition, with a new foreword of Andrew Keen's witty and provocative polemic against the rise of user-generated content and the anything goes standards of much online publishing, which set the blogosphere and media alight on publication.

Dubbed the 'anti-christ' of Silicon Valley and a dot-com apostate, Andrew Keen is the leading contemporary critic of the Internet. and The Cult of the Amateur is a scathing attack on the mad utopians of Web 2.0 and the wisdom of the crowd. Keen argues that much of the content filling up YouTube, MySpace, and blogs is just an endless digital forest of mediocrity which, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter public debate and manipulate public opinion.

Reviews

A staggering new book by Andrew Keen. He is an English-born digital media entrepreneur and Silicon Valley insider who really knows his stuff and he writes with the passion of a man who can at last see the dangers he has helped unleash. His book will come as a real shock to many. It certainly did to me. --A N Wilson, The Daily Mail A shrewdly argued jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political gatekeepers and replace experts with 'the wisdom of the crowd'. Keen writes with acuity and passion. --The New York Times The Cult of the Amateur needed to be written and it needs to be read. --Management Today

Author Bio

Andrew Keen hosts the acclaimed podcast show, AfterTV, and his views have generated a firestorm of interest.