What’s Next?

Andrew Keen was on NewsNight last night promoting his new book ‘The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy’. His basic premise is that the Internet has allowed too many amateurs into the game and the traditional ‘cultural gatekeepers’ - reporters, editors and the film industry have fallen by the way-side.

This is so elitist it’s frightening. It works on the assumption that the old means of deciding whose views deserved to be heard was better. That people who aren’t in the select few should just stay out of the whole thing and leave the important job of thinking to the professionals.

“[They] can use their networked computers to publish everything from uninformed political commentary, to unseemly home videos, to embarrassingly amateurish music, to unreadable poems, reviews, essays, and novels”.

People who use the internet will see past Keen’s point immediately. Yes, there is an awful lot of twaddle on the Internet, but there is an awful lot of gold that you don’t need to look too hard to find. There is plenty of excellent music on the internet, some excellent novels, well-produced videos and many many well-written blogs. There are plenty of experts on the internet, the difference is that no-one chooses who they are except the viewers. ‘Uninformed political commentary’? How about the personal blogs of politicians? The voice of our elected officials untampered by commentators? Isn’t the average citizen better informed now that there’s Wikipedia available (which contrary to what Keen might think, has surprisingly efficient quality control) at the click of a mouse rather than having to shell out for Britannica ? How can this be a bad thing?

The Internet is not just a new medium, it’s a far better medium because it’s active rather than passive. The great advantage of the Internet is the so-called ‘infinite canvas’, bloggers aren’t limited by column length to make their point. Take whenever a documentary like ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ emerges, a newspaper can run something giving the highlights of why it’s crap, but a blog can go point for point, saying exactly what’s wrong, and if it’s wrong, there will be another blog explaining why. The blogosphere has proved a far better medium for checking the mainstream media than it ever was itself.

If that’s not good enough, how about the Internet allowing collaboration on a far larger scale? The success of online collaboration has allowed the open-source operating system Linux to (nearly) match the power of windows, and can be used for free. In turn, this makes it possible for the OLPC to design a laptop that costs $100 to give the power of the technology to the world’s poor. The ability for charities and pressure groups to organise on a far larger scale than ever before. Keen might moan the ‘democratisation’ of the media, but you get the feeling he’d probably have been one of those bemoaning the extension of the franchise. After all, if the masses don’t have anything interesting to say, who wants them deciding who’s in charge?

The end of cultural gatekeepers? It’s about time. The time when a few decided what our culture means is over. The internet far from destroying our culture has become our culture. It tells people that they can aspire to be more than intellectual consumers and can have their own voice. I for one can’t see that as anything other than one of the most important steps our culture has taken in a long time.