The Cult of the Amateur

The Cult of the Amateur
Author :
Publisher : Crown Currency
Total Pages : 258
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780385520812
ISBN-13 : 0385520816
Rating : 4/5 (816 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Cult of the Amateur by : Andrew Keen

Download or read book The Cult of the Amateur written by Andrew Keen and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2008-08-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement. Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors. In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented. The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions. Offering concrete solutions on how we can reign in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.


The Cult of the Amateur Related Books

The Cult of the Amateur
Language: en
Pages: 258
Authors: Andrew Keen
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2008-08-12 - Publisher: Crown Currency

GET EBOOK

Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes
The Internet Is Not the Answer
Language: en
Pages: 249
Authors: Andrew Keen
Categories: Computers
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-01-06 - Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

GET EBOOK

The renowned Internet commentator and author of How to Fix the Future“expos[es] the greed, egotism and narcissism that fuels the tech world” (Chicago Tribun
The Cult of the Amateur
Language: en
Pages: 237
Authors: Andrew Keen
Categories: Computers
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-03-04 - Publisher: Hachette UK

GET EBOOK

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 stan
Digital Vertigo
Language: en
Pages: 223
Authors: Andrew Keen
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-05-22 - Publisher: St. Martin's Press

GET EBOOK

"Digital Vertigo provides an articulate, measured, contrarian voice against a sea of hype about social media. As an avowed technology optimist, I'm grateful for
Amateur
Language: en
Pages: 224
Authors: Thomas Page McBee
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-05-14 - Publisher: Scribner

GET EBOOK

*Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction *Shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award *Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize One of The Times U