Andrew Keen is author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture. This transcript is part of an interview with Ira Basen for the CBC Radio Sunday Edition documentary News 2.0. Series air date on CBC Radio: Sunday, June 21 and Sunday, June 28, 2009.

---

IB: You talk about the "noble amateur" as the defining figure of the Web 2.0 Revolution. Who is the noble amateur, how did he come about, and what's your big beef with him?

AK: Well I guess there's the theory of the noble amateur and the truth about the noble amateur. The theory of the noble amateur, the one that's peddled by the 2.0 crowd is that throughout history there is this genuine, decent, honest citizen that hasn't been allowed to speak because the professionals in media have shut them up, have closed them down. They've controlled the means of knowledge, the means of information and now with this technological revolution, that ordinary person, that noble citizen is allowed to speak and they use these new technologies of communication, the tools of creativity, blogs, YouTube and the other technology to communicate. They become their own broadcast channel – that's the theory, and theories of course are always more noble.

The practice, the truth about these so called amateurs is made up of wealthy technologists who have made a fortune and sitting around in their big (inaudible) in California and blogging because they're the only ones who can really afford to invest significant time in working for free – and the other group of people are kids who again have nothing better to do in college or in high school - real noble citizens are too busy with their jobs and careers and their families to invest too much time in expressing themselves for nothing.

IB: Why, in the early years of the 21st century, has the noble amateur emerged from nowhere to become the defining figure of this revolution?

AK: It hasn't emerged from nowhere. Like all bad figures in history, one can find their origins with the French…maybe not the French but certainly someone with a French sounding name. Jean Jacques Rousseau, I think can be seen as the father of amateurism, the father of noble innocence. Of course, he's the father of the counter enlightened. Rousseau wrote against the idea of professional knowledge, suggesting that essentially the less you know, the more you know.

This romanticism, this idealization of innocence, of ignorance, I think gets carried through history from Rousseau, through the counter enlightenment, to the 1960s I think you see the rebirth of Rousseau's romanticism in the 60s revolt against authority and professionalism, against expertise and it's only a short distance intellectually at least, between the counter culture of the 1960s and that kind of romanticized Rousseau and rebellion against authority and the idealization of innocence in the web 2.0 era. I think it would be very wrong to argue that the cult of that amateur is new; what's new about it is that technology is driving.

IB: You talk about the roots of the Web 2.0 as being the counter culture of the 1960's and yet the people at the heart of the revolution seem to be this odd mixture of the counter culture and yet they seem to worship at the feet of Fredrick Hayek and Milton Friedman and this conservative sort of capitalism.

AK: That's a very interesting point. I see there being three core intellectual strands at the web 2.0 - the counter culture of the 60s, the idealization of the free market and then the fetishization of technology, but I think they all come together in libertarianism, this revolt against authority, this idea that the self should be the place that all authority lies. Now, I see the counter-culture of the 60s as if you like, a left libertarianism, whereas the Hayekian idealization of the market is a right libertarianism. Chris Anderson, the author of Long Tail and the editor of Wired magazine is the High Priest of that Hayekian right libertarianism. Someone like Dave Weiner who invented the blogging software is, I think, a very good example of left libertarianism. Kevin Carrie is another good example of left libertarianism. Many of the leading figures of the web 2.0 movement came out of the counter culture.

IB: Do most of them have these various strains competing within them?

AK: That's a good question. I think some of them do. Some of them are strange ideological mishmashes, but most of them I think, either come, most of them can either be characterized as left libertarians or right libertarians. Most of them are driven either by this fetishization of the market; the market solves everything or this idealization of freedom, this revolt against all forms of authority. I think interestingly enough in terms of these two strands coming together, they come together in the most interesting way in a company like Google, which on the one hand, idealizes the free market, is extremely hostile to the State and on the other hand, also has created this new concept of what I call authentic capitalism, this idea that one can be immensely rich in the free market, but also do good, that of course accounts for Google's mantra of do no evil.

IB: What do you mean by Google being hostile to the state? How does that manifest itself?

AK: Well, I think the Google solution is if all forms of external authority keep their hands off the internet economy, then everything will work out well. I had a big debate with Vince Cerf, Google's chief evangelist, one of the father's of the internet, a very brilliant technologist; I'm not sure if he's a brilliant intellectual theorist, but certainly very good on the technology side, and we did a debate last year at Rio for the United Nations Conference about the internet and I was, well, at certain points the state does need to intervene, to control censorship, to manage pornography, identity theft, that there needs to be some involvement of the State of external forces, and I think Cerf, who epitomizes the free market ideology at a company like Google is hostile to the State.

They believe that the market resolves everything, that the activities of the crowd result in a kind of justice and I think that's symbolized by the Google product itself, which is seen as an aggregation of the wisdom of the crowd. The Google search engine which is worth now I think about 150 billion dollars on the public market - Google itself being now the most successful and best known brand in the world, is an aggregation of all of us. It is a manifestation in the very pure sense of the free market.

I think what you find with the Google is this romantic idealization of individualism, the idea that we can do good external from the State. Google almost represents a country rather than a company. I see Google as being symbolic of the new age in both a positive but also of course, a very negative sense.

The other thing I think about Google in a more sort of economic sense is that theirs is the model of the 2.0 economy. They've revolutionized the content business, they've revolutionized the media, they've become the next generation media company. What Google figure out – perhaps they stumbled on it initially but they quite quickly realized that they had found the Holy Grail, they really discovered the key to massive media wealth.

The traditional media model was you pay content makers to create content and then you sell that content. What Google figured was if you put out a search engine which we all contribute, but don't pay individuals, then you can make a lot more money and the Google model is absolutely brilliant of course, because the Google search engine is created by all of us.

When you or I request a search on Google, we're not paid by Google, in fact, Google profit every time we make a search because they sell advertising against it, but Google doesn't build a search engine – there aren't thousands of people working at Google who are creating intelligence for the search engine. The artificial algorithm at the heart of the Google product is created by all of us. It is the most successful example of a wisdom of a crowd product, but of course, in economic terms, they're laughing all the way to the bank.

IB: One of the features of the Web 2.0 revolution, in addition to the rise of the amateur, has been the decline in the value of expertise and professionalism. Why has that happened?

AK: I think again, we can blame Rousseau. Well, maybe not so much Rousseau but certainly go back to the 60s. I think what's happening, and this needs to be seen in a broad cultural sense. It's a consequence rather than a cause of all this technology. What you're seeing is general rebellion against authority. You're seeing it with a rebellion against the State, politicians, to some extent within the family, but above all else, against institutions which we now use as punch bags.

Politics is a very good example, but also the media – what's happened there is that the resentment against the authority of media has been politicized. People treat journalists as they treat politicians, as example of authority figures who are incompetent, or corrupt, or self interested.

The rebellion against mainstream media is part of a broader, social rebellion against authority and it can be seen most clearly in a generational revolt. You'll find that most people over 30, 35 or 40 are somewhat sympathetic to mainstream media. The vast majority of people under 30 are deeply hostile to mainstream media and are thrilled with the fact that newspapers and television are going away and being replaced by a self-broadcasting media.

IB: Although it's the people over 30 or 40 who were part of the counter-culture who are the fathers of the web 2.0 revolution, so you'd think it would be the people older people who are leading the attack on authority figures, including the media.

AK: Well, some of the older counter-cultural figures are the fathers of the web 2.0 movement, so at any Silicon Valley conference, you'll find a lot of older guys in ponytails and Grateful Dead t-shirts wandering around. I think that this period might be described as 1968.2.0 but it's a different kind of rebellion. The rebellion of youth today is the rebellion in which the way to shock ones elders, is to reveal oneself on the internet.

The most shocking behaviour is having in My Space or a Face Book page in which one appears half naked, revealing ones drinking habits, ones sexual habits, ones most intimate fantasies, so the great cultural rebellion today, and this is why it's different from the 60's but it's equal in some senses as I think as a cultural period of revolution. The great revolution is living ones life from the internet, revealing oneself, rebelling against the very idea of privacy.

IB: So you see this as part of the revolt against authority?

AK: It's a revolt against authority, it's a way of shocking ones elders. I mean, the reality today is, it's hard to shock ones parents; in the 60s it was pretty easy, I mean, you took drugs and you had a lot of sex and that was a good way to absolutely outrage anyone older than yourself in an authority figure. It's becoming increasingly difficult I think, to outrage people, but the one way of doing it is to self-broadcast oneself. That's the most shocking way I think of undermining traditional authority and going against traditional institutions of authority - whether it's mainstream media, politicians, the church, even the family.

What 's interesting to me, and this is something quite frankly I can't work out - the rebellious generation today is hostile to mainstream media, hostile to politics, but not hostile to family. The relations generally I think within the family are quite intimate, although I think one of the differences between now and then is that many the kids who are involved in the web 2.0 movement are from broken families.

IB: I'd like to talk to you about the assault on mainstream media and this idea of "citizen journalism." I assume this is a term you do not particularly want to embrace.

AK: Citizen Journalism, no, it's not my favourite phrase, just as I 'm not keen on a phrase like citizen pilot or citizen chef or citizen politician. When I flew out to Canada today, I got on the plane and the pilot didn't get on the phone and say I'm volunteering today, I'm an enthusiast at flying the plane, so I just thought I would help you out; I'm doing it for free.

The notion of citizenship is something which I think has been profoundly misunderstood and abused by the web 2.0 crowd. Good citizens, the purpose of, the purpose of media for a good citizen is to understand the world, to digest information so that they can understand the world and act upon it. That's the nature of our representative democracy. Information then, the value of a journalist, a professional journalist is to provide the citizen with that information, to understand the world, to vote, to determine the qualities of ones own government and ones own role in the world.

Citizenship and journalism don't go together. A good journalist is not necessarily a good citizen. A good journalist, a brilliant journalist like a Robert Fisk in England or a Thomas Friedman in America is not necessarily a good citizen. They don't have to vote. They could be a fascist for all we know, entirely indifferent to politics, but that doesn't undermine the quality of their journalism, their experience, their professionalism, the quality of their writing.

Citizenship and journalism have nothing to do with one another and when you bring them together, it's very dangerous because what you're saying is anyone who wants to improve the world should go out and report it so virtue then replaces professionalism. Good intention makes one a good journalist and that results in incompetence.

I don't have a problem with democratizing the media, provided that there are editors and competent people involved in the process. My problem with the blogosphere and with the web 2.0 revolution is the idealization of amateurs, the innocent, the old sort of Rousseau notion that the child knows more than the adult so I'm all in favour of new more irreverent magazines or online periodicals coming along and challenging conventional wisdom.

I think Joshua Marshall on the blogosphere is a good example of a very high quality, smart, professional journalist that's doing an excellent job. I think that Arianna Huffington is another good example of someone who has something interesting to say, although she could just as easily write in mainstream media. So I don't have a problem with start up media organizations.

I think the great benefit of web 2.0 is that the media revolution has given mainstream media a good kick in the pants. The problem is, when that kick in the pants becomes a kick in the crotch and you kill the thing. The other problem, and this is my fundamental critique of the web 2.0 idealogs is the vast majority of new voices on the internet are not earning an income, which means they can only do it part time, which means that the quality of their work, whatever their talent is going to be inferior to the person who is employed full time.

The problem with the shift from traditional newspapers to the blogosphere is the blogosphere is not a viable, economic platform to support full time journalists. Ultimately in the long run, we are going to become a nation of Huffington Post opinionators. We are going to become a nation in which we are getting a lot of opinions, a lot of peoples views, and fewer facts because more and more newspapers are closing down or forced to shut foreign bureaus.

The ironic consequence of this so called global village is actually more and more localization, more and more parochial media and more and more of the internet as a kind of echo chamber where people go on it to listen to exactly what they want. It's less open, less global.