The Amateurs' Hour
Is the Internet destroying our culture, or is it just annoying our snobs?
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen, New York: Currency, 228 pages, $22.95
Andrew Keen’s website claims, without a hint of humility, that he’s “the leading contemporary critic of the Internet.” No kidding? The entire Internet? A curious reader might wonder whether such an all-inclusive battle is similar to taking on, say, “music” or “radio waves.” It is.
More specifically, Keen’s depressing book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, laments techno-utopianism, free content, and the rise of citizen journalists, filmmakers, musicians, and critics as cultural arbiters. It is a book, in other words, of spectacular elitism.
