(Flux Capacitors set to 2007!)

While at first glance, this seems like your average 2012-style semi-psychotic rant, Andrew Keen introduces his book titled The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, and he’s actually got some good points. The funny thing is, this speech took place in 2007. It’s interesting how little has changed in two years, and that just about every one of his anecdotal references are still relevant.

“In Web 2.0, the new Elite are Anonymous, The new Elite are the kids who shape the content of community.”

The video is quite long, but it’s rather interesting. To make it spicier, he does involve the crowd several times in some of the most controversial segments of his discourse. That crowd is made up the workers at Google, so the responses are just as interesting – especially when he’s actually attacking Google.

Some of his better points made:

• Web 2.0 is untrustworthy; there is a definitive lack of transparency vice “old media.”
• Democratized Media is illiterate media.
• There is cause for worry that younger generations cannot discern between truth and advertisement.
• The old (and largely philosophical) rule of 80/20 – which is to say that a 20% elitist bloc rules the majority – applies on the Internet just as strongly as in real-life political spheres. He adds, however, that the 20% is no longer old, but young and unqualified. It’s also anonymous.
• He does keep to the echo chamber side of the debate and maintains that the Internet “is a mirror.” However, the mirror-world is skewed and anarchist by default.
• The Internet isn’t a very nice place to be anymore.
• People-driven sites like Digg or Reddit are too easily gamed.

So, what we have here, are a bunch of points made two years ago, that are still just as valid now as they were then. He may be a bit overly dramatic in his shtick, but you can’t deny he’s got some good points.

It’s worth listening to.

As I stated earlier, the video is extremely long. He’s very up-to-date, so it’s not ramblings of an upset old man. Set it to play and switch desktops, do some work, and keep your ears open, because it’s a rolling boulder of interesting skepticism, and that’s something not often presented so eloquently.

What I’m taking from this:

“1984 2.0″ – I’ll be using that later.

Thanks to my friend Paul for showing me this.