, —

___
I • ‘

>‘(
amateur hour has arrived, and
.
the audience is running the show

z, I have a ot of tbngs to think about

My initial reaction to the book was: ‘Gee
a thought
munities of Web 2.0, this is bou’d to be
‘: For people immersed in the social com
, there is nage
I doWt agree with everything Keen says
orovoking and sobering book. While
forward to “uch-rieeded debate
ht and research. I look
a’er page of really interesting insig issed.
ulates—which can’t be atlv dsm
about the problems that Keen artic
ia. arid founder. Ctzendur.’
—Larry Sanger, cofounder, Wikiped
rea’e book in the
beautifully written stoo-and-b
This is a powerful, provocative, and ’s bistorv.
in information and commuf’icao.
midst of the greatest paradigm shift
ltbcenra’.con.l arid
, HealthCentral Network (hea
—Christopher M. Schroeder; CEO racve
hingtonpost.Newsweek lnte
former CEO arid publisher, Was

. .
constructive debate. T”s s
lmportant. will spur some very
ta o’ tIeb 2.C.
tive changes to the current i”e’
a book that can produce posi
of community, CNET
—Martin Green, vice president
’
ology alone will make ‘or a bee
For anyone who thinks that techn
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‘Very engaging, and quite cont
et
—Dan Farber, editor-in-chief, ZDN D
ld—ad tha.k
, classically educated techriosco
Andrew Keen is a brilliant, witty
2.0’s army o Dawds.
intellectual Goliath to slay Web
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IS ‘!—c——2:!:—
a n d rew kee
Ii1ihI iiT
 I

:1
the great seduction

eties, I wis a pio

irst a confession. Back iii tlw Nin
. With the dream
neer in the first Internet gold rush
sical place, I founded
of making the world a more niu
liest digital music sites.
Audiocafe.com, one of the ear
iwisco Bay area Ilewspa
Once, when asked by a Sati l”ra
nge the world, I replied.
per reporter how I wanted to cha
was to have music playing
half serioush that my fantasy
the whole Bob Dlao oet,vre
from “every orifice,” to hear
he able to download Johann
from my laptop computer. to
stiaii Bach’s Brandenbu
rg Concertos from my ccliii
‘l
r phone.
!
dreaiai. I
‘‘ yes. peddled the original Internet
. i’liis, there-
‘
estors and I almost became rich
(hIIee(l
con Valley. lts he
rre, is tio ordinary critique of Sili
now on the outside who
ork of an apostate. aLt insider
 has poured out his cup of Kool-Aid and resigned his
membership in the cult.
My metamorphosis from believer into skeptic lacks
cinematic drania. I didn’t break down while reading an
incorrect Wikipedia entry about 1’. H. Huxley or get
struck by lightning while doing a search for myself on
Google. My epiphany didn’t involve a dancing coyote, so
it probably wouldn’t be a hit on YouTtibe.
It took place over forty-eight hours, in Septeniber
2004, on a two-day camping trip with a couple of hun
dred Silicon Valley utopians. Sleeping bag under my
arm, rucksack on my back, I marched into camp a mem
ber of the cult; two days later, feeling queas I left au
tin believer.
The camping trip took place in Sebastopol, a small
farming town in northern California’s Sonoma Valle
about fifty miles north of the infamous Silicon Valley—
the narrow peninsula of land between San Francisco
and San Jose. Sebastopol is the headquarters of O’Reilly
Media, one of the world’s leading traffickers of books,
l full days, we camped togethiei roasted uimarshinallows
magazines, and trade shows about information techno
ogy, au evangelizer of innovation to a worLdwide congre
gation of techutophiles. It is both Silicon Valley’s most
fervent preacher and its noisiest chorus.
invita
Each Fall, O’Reilly Media hosts an exclusive,
tion-only event called FOO (Friends of O’Reilly) Camp.
ly
These friends of multi-millionaire founder Tim O’Reil
en
are not only unconventionallY rich and richly unconv
ic
tional but also harbor a messianic faith in the econom
U
and cultural benefits of technology. O’Reilly and his
Silicon Valley acolytes are a mix of graving hippies, new
media entrepreneurs, and technology geeks. What unites
them is a shared hostility toward traditional uiuedia and
entertainment. Part Woodstock, part Burning 1an (the
contemporary festival of self-expression held in a desert
in Nevada), and part Stanford Business School retreat,
FOO Camp is where the countercultural Sixties meets
the free-market Eighties meets the technophile Nineties.
Silicon Valley conferences weren’t new to me. I had
even organized one myself at the tail end of the last
Internet boom. But FOO Camp was radically different.
Its only rule was an unrule: “no spectators, only partici
pants.” The camp was run on open-source, Wikipedia
style participatory pririciples—wh ich ulleant that
everyone talked a lot, and there was no one iii charge.
So there we were, two hundred of us, Silicon Valley’s
antiestablishment establishment, collectively won Ii hun
dreds of millions of dollars, gazing at the stars from the
lawn of O’Reilly Media’s corporate headquarters. For tvo
r.
together, and celebrated the revival of our cult togethe
The Internet was back! And unlike the ( old Rush
irra
Nineties, this time around our exuberance wasn’t
Tim
tional. l’his shins’ new version of the Internet, what
to change a
O’Reilly called Web 2.0, really was going
broadband a.
everything. Now that most Americans had C
0
networked, 0
access to the Internet, time dream of a fully
be realized.
alwavs-conuuected society was Iiuuallv going to I)
 (T44Sfr1 -o
Fgesi
$14 s4 p ,
There was one word on every FOO Camper’s lips in Sep
teniber 2004. That word was “democratization.”
I never realized democracy has so many possibilities,
so much revolutionary potential. Media, information,
know ledge, content, audience, author—all were going
to be democratized by Web 2.0. l’he Internet would
democratize Big Media, Big Business, Big Government.
It would even democratize Big Experts, transforming
them into what one friend of O’Reilly called, in a hushed,
reverent tone, “noble amateurs.”
Although Sebastopol was miles from the ocean, by the
second morning of camp. I had begun to feel seasick. At
first I thought it was the greasy camp food or perhaps the
that
hot northern California weather. lInt I soon realized
heart
even my gut was reacting to the emptiness at the
of our conversation.
of
I had come to FOO Camp to imagine the future
help me
media. I wanted to know how the Internet could
dream of
“bring more music to more orifices.” But my
fallen on
making the world a more musical place had
bring more
deaf ears; the promise of using technology to
by FOO
culture to the masses had been drowned out
media.
Campers’ collective cry for a democratized
music, not
The new Internet. was about self-made
Audience and
Bob Dylan or the Brandenburg Concertos.
rming cul
author had become one, and we were transfo
ture into cacophony.
preview. We
FO() Camp. I realized, was a sneak
we were the
werent there just to talk about new media;
L
new media. The event was a beta version of the Web 2.0
revolution, where Wikipedia met MySpace met You’Liibe.
Everyone was simultaneously broadcasting themseLves,
but nobody was listening. Out of this anarchy, it sud
denly became clear that what was governing the infinite
monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the
law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and
to
most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way
intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering.
The more that was said that weekend, the less I wanted
d, I
to express myself. As the din of narcissism swelle
on
became increasingly silent. And thus began my rebelli
I
against Silicon Valley. Instead of adding to the noise,
partici
broke the one law of FOO Camp 2004. 1 stopped
pating and sat back and watched.
the last
I haven’t stopped watching since. I’ve spent
I’m dis
two years observing the Web 2.0 revolution, and
mayed by what I’ve seen.
away.
I’ve seen the infinite monkeys, of course, typing
well, includ
And I’ve seen many other strange sights as
a lie, a suppos
ing a video of marching penguins selling
g to each other
edly infinite Long Tail, and dogs chattin
like Hitch
online. But what I’ve been watching is more
horror movie
cock’s The Birds than Doctor Doo!ittte: a
revolution.
about the consequences of the digital
idealization, is 0
Because democratization, despite its lofty
m
rse, and belittling 0.
C
undermining truth, souring civic discou ‘1
I noted earlier it as 0
expertise, experience, and talent. As
cultural institutions.
threatening the very future of our n
 tion Truth, to paraphrase Toni Friedman, is being “flat
I call it the great seduction. The Web 2.() revolu (•_-tf
version
tened,” as we create an on-demand, personalized
has peddled the promise of bringing more truth to more ‘1
person’s
that reflects our own individual myopia. One
people—more depth of information, more global per media
truth becomes as “true” as anyone else’s. Today’s
spective, more unbiased opinion from dispassionate truths,
Web is shattering the world into a billion personalized
observers. But this is all a smokescreen. What the quote 1
observa each seemingly equally valid and worthwhile. To
2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial CEO of
analysis, Richard Edelman, the founder president, and
tions of the world around us rather than deep owned public
The Edelman PR, the world’s largest privately
shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.
Inter relations conipaiiv:
information business is being transformed by the
rs all
net into the sheer noise of a hundred million blogge there
In this era of exploding media technologies
simultaneously talking about themselves. lf.’
and is no truth except the truth you create for yourse
Moreover, the free, user-generated content spawned
the ranks
extolled by the Web 2.0 revolution is decimating the quality
journal This undermining of truth is threatening
of our cultural gatekeepers, as professional critics, plagiarism and
other purveyors of civil public discourse, encouraging
ists, editors, musicians, moviemakers, and creativity. When
(“disintermedi intellectual property theft, and stifling
of expert information are being replaced disguised as news,
r bloggers, hack advertising and public relations are
ated,” to use a FOD Camp term) by amateu becomes blurred.
attic recording the line between fact and fiction
reviewers, homespun moviemakers, and or culture, all
business models Instead of more communit3; knowledge,
artists. Meanwhile, the radically new more dubious content
the economic value that Web 2.0 really delivers is
based on user-generated material suck our time and playing
from anonymous sources, hijacking
content.
out of traditional media and cultural
more about the to our gullibility.
We—those of us who want to know of perjurious pelt
of mainstream Need proof? Let’s look at that army
world, those of us who are the consumers to be exact. Fea
promise of the guins—”Al Gore’s Army of Penguins”
“self-made” satire of I’
culture—are being seduced by the empty
tured on YouTube, the film, a crude a
consequence of the 1ti Inconvenient
Tru i/i. a
“democratized” media. For the real Gore’s pro-environment movie
reliable news, and a
Gore’s message by depict a.
Web 2.0 revolution is less culture, less C
belittles the seriousness of Al n
chilling reality in preaching w other pen 0
a chaos of useless information. One ing a penguin version of Al Gore
blurring, obfuscation,
this brave new digital epoch is the guins about global warning.
and even disappearance of truth.

But “Al (,ores Army of Penguins” is not just aitotlier
of
homemade example of iuTube inanity. Though many
the 12().00t) people who viewed this video undoubtedly
eur
assumed it was the work of some SUV-driviitg amat
with an aversion to recycling, in realit; the K’all Street
to
kurtial traced the real authorship of this neocon satire
rela
DCI Group, a conservative Washington, D.C., public
Exxon-
tionships and lobbying firm whose clients include
al spin,
Mobil! The video is nothing more than politic
2.0,
enabled and perpetuated by the anonymity of Web
1 short, it is a big lie.
masquerading as jijivenideii._ent L
propa
Blos too, can be vehicles for veiled corporate
ganda and deceptiqn. In March 2006, the New
1
Thrk
But the anticorporate blogs are ecpmallv loose with time
truth. In 2(11t5, when the famous and lictit ions linger- iii-
the-chili story broke, every anti-Wendy’s blogger jumped
on it as evidence of fast-food malfeasance. The bogus
job
story cost Wendy’s $2.5 million in Lost sales as well as
stock.
losses and a decline in the price of the company’s
lian
As former British Prime Minister James CalLag
re time
said, “A lie can make its way around the world befo
miever
truth has time chance to put its boots on.” ‘i’Lmat has
heeling.
been more true titan with the speeding, freew
unchecked culture of today’s blogosphere.
It doesn’t require the gravilas of a world leader to appre
media. ip ,

audatry ‘posi ciate the implications of this democratized

Times reported about a blogger whose 1 pendent videog
press releases fliiee4editor_freeldJwl mere inde
ings about Val-Mart were “identical” to amateur
the Arkansas raphers, podcasters, and bloggers can post their
written by a senior account supervisor at paid to check
the same team ish creations at will, and no one is being
retailer’s PR company. Perhaps this is media is
of unflattering their credentials or evaluate their material,
behind the mysterious elimination every stripe—
its employees on vulnerable to untrustworthy content of
remarks about Wal-Mart’s treatment of multinational
whether from duplicitous PR companies,
he retailer’s Vikipedia entry. anonymous
battlefield on corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s,
Blogs are increasingly becoming the isticated invented
are waging their bloggers, or sexual predators with soph
which public relations spin doctors
ching a major identities.
propaganda war. In 2005, before laun vsian prosti
met with envi VVho is to sa for example, that a sIala
investment, General Electric executives Vou’l’ube video ol
the greenness of tution ring (lidtmt sponsor time famous
a
ronmnental bloggers to woo them over the Englishwnman a
Meanwhile, multina tIme sex’ Malaysian dancer? Or that
a
a new energy-efficient technology. chocolate and mar a
in the bu’l’ube video eating the S
n
General Motors all ha’ United Biscuits
tionals like IBM, Maytag, and malade cookie isn’t really being paid by 0
peddle their versions
blogs that, under an objective guise, Incorporated? I ‘I
world.
of corporate truth to the outside

Cult of
Who is to say that the glowing review of The
led you to
the Amateur on Amazon.coni that might have
’t ored
purchase this “brilliantly original” book wasn auth
?
by me, posing as an enthusiastic third party
and
As I’ll discuss in more detail in Chapter 3, truth
lution.
trust are the whipping boys of the Web 2.0 revo
al editors
In a world with fewer and fewer profession
and whom to
or reviewers, how are we to know what
content on
believe? Because much of the user-generated
r a pseudo
the Internet is posted anonymously or tinde
of much of this
nym, nobody knows who the real author
d be a monkey.
self-generated content actually is. It coul
Al Gore.
It could be a penguin. It could even be
st cathedral of
Look at Wikipedia, the Internet’s large
al encyclopedia
knowledge. Unlike editors at a profession
volunteer editors
like the Britannica, the identity of the
citizen editors out-edit
on Wikipedia is unknown. These
fining, then rere
other citizen editors in defining, rede
of times a day. Take,
defining truth, sometimes hundreds
n embezzler Ken
for example, July 5, 2006, the day Enro
the Wikipedia entry
Lay died. At 10:06 t. that day,
arent suicide.” Two
about Lay said he died of an “app
e of death was an
minutes later, it said that the caus
10:11 A.M., Wikipedia
“apparent heart attack.” Then at
so many lives finally
reported that the “guilt of ruining
2, we were back to the
led him to his suicide.”’ At 10:1
ise. And in February
massive coronary causing Lay’s dem
oy Playmate Anna
2007, lust minutes after ex-Playb
her Wikipedia page was
Nicole Smith died in Florida,
cause
flooded with conflicting, speculative versions of the
I ember
of death. As Marshall Poe observed in the Sept
2006 issue of the it/antic:
I
We tend to thiiik of truth as something that resides
ls four
in the world. The fact that two puts two equa
But Wikipedia suggests a
is written in the stars
the way
different theory of truth. Just think about
. . .
The comnmtiity
we learn what words mean.
way
decides that two plus two equals four the same
it decides what an apple is: by cons
ensus. Yes, that
its mind and
means that if the community changes
two plus
decides that two plus two equals five, then
two does equal/Ire. ‘l’hie community isn’t likely to
bitt it has the
do such an absurd or useless thing,
-
ability.
Brother insisted
In Orwell’s Ni,ween Eight -u Big
forming a patently
that two plus two equaled five, trans
-sallctiOlle(l, official
incorrect statement into the state
7, there is potentially
truth. ‘Ibday, as I discuss iii Chapter
Brother lurking in the
an even more threatening Big
We pour our innermost
shadows: the search engine.
h engine through the
secrets into the all-powerful searc
3-
I’
we enter daily. Search
tens of millions of questions ‘I
more about our habits, our a
engines like Google know I.
0.
friends, our loved ones, and C
interests, our desires than our n
e in Nineteen Eighty 0
3
our shrink combined. But unlik
much for real. We have to
Fou’; this Big Brother is very
trust it not to spill our secrets—a trust, as we will see,
that has repeatedly been betrayed.
Paradoxically enough, the holy grail of advertisers in
the flattened world of the Web 2.0 is to achieve the trust
of others. And it is turning the conventional advertising
industry upside down. MySpace, according to the 1ill
Street Journal and other papers, now runs profiles of fic
tional characters in an attempt to market certain products
by creating “personal relationships with millions of young
people.” News Corp. (which owns MySpace) has bought
the right to include profiles of fictional characters suchas
Ricky Bobby (played by Vill Ferrehl) from the 2006
blockbuster Thlkdega .Vig/it.c. Other recent members of
the MvSpace community include advertising vehicles
like Gil. the crab front the I fonda Element commercials;
Burger King’s royal mascot; and a character called “Miss
Irresistible,” the gleaming-toothed spokesperson for a new
version of Crest toothpaste. But are Gil, the Burger King
king, and Miss Irresistible really our friends? No. They
are fictional characters whose only purpose is to sell our
impressionable kids more toothpaste and hamburgers.
Our trust in conventional advertising is being further
compromised by the spoof advertisements proliferating
on the Internet. For example, the .Vew )rk Times
reported on August 13, 2006. that at the time, over 100
videos mocking an ad campaign launched by the litter
net phone provider Vonage were posted on YouTube, and
that many had been viewed at least 5,000 times. These
r Original file-sharing tet-htmiobogies like Napste
amateurish, unauthorized send-ups of popular comme
cials are rarely flattering, and typically invent or
flaws in a brand or a product. However, to tile chagrin ol a(i
executives (the interactive creative (lireetor for (rispiii,
Porter & Bogusky likens the phenomenoti to “brand icr
rorisni on the internet”), the homemade videos are often
cobbled together from clips of actual advert istnieiits.
making the knockoffs often i tid istinguisi table from the
real commercials.
Our attitudes about juthorsh ip,’jtoo , are Ut idergol i
_1
a radical change as a result of today s democratized
Internet culture. III a world iii which audience and
author are increasingly in(listinguisllablc, and where
authenticity is almost impossible to verify, t lie idea of
original authorship and intellectual property has lweii
serious1’ coiniproinised. \iio “owits” the roiitcttt created
ho
by the fictional movie characters on IvSpaee’
“owns” the content created by an ano,ivmoi,s hive of
Wikipedia editors:’ ito “owns” the cotiteilt iosteil liv
bloggers, whether it originates from corporate spill (14W-
ivhti
tors or from articles in the .t’W lurk 7’h?mL’. ‘l’hmis
ease iii
bus defimmitiomi of ownership. colnpoItI(le(I 1w tile
work to
which we cami now cut and paste oilier peoples
i-mi hilt ig
make it appear as if it’s ours. has resti I ted in a i
ty.
new permissiveness about intellectual proper
play on the K,
Cutting and pasting, of course, is chlii(lS
of ijitehiect iml 0
Web 2.0, enabling a otinger gelieratiolt
K’
ciii and pasl 0
kieptomaniacs. who think their ability to K,
makes it i heir own. 0
a well-phrased thought or opimnon D
r and kuzaa.
 Web. lucy are, as Professor Sally Brown at Leeds Metro
which gained so much attention during the first Veb
politan University notes, “Postmodern, eclectic, Google
boom, pale in comparison to the latest Web 2.0 “reinixing”
gelterationists, Wikipediasts, who don’t necessarily
of content and “mashing up” of software and music. In
recognize the concepts of authorships/ownersh
ips.”
a twisted kind of Alice in Wonderland, down-the-rabbit-
The intellectual consequences of such theft are pro
hole logic, Silicon Valley visionaries such as Stanford
foundly disturbing. Gibson’s culture of the ubiquitous
law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence
remix is not only destroying the sanctity of authorship
Lessig and cyberpunk author William Gibson laud the indi
but also undermining our traditional safeguards of
appropriation of intellectual property. As Gibson wrote hook bya -

vidual creativity. thbje once Ilacel on a

in the July 2005 issue of Wired magazine:
eatautlIorjLkng al!enged by the dream of
‘e1perlinkedmjt of authprs who eaid!ely
Our culture no longer bothers to use words like? each
annotje and revise it., f.axyer conversing with
k appropriation or borrowing to describe those very
otl!-ffldiflg loop of self-references.
activities. Today’s audience isn’t listening at all—
Kevin Kelly, in a May 2006 !w Thrk Times iIaga
it’s participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a traditional
zinc article,’ rhapsodizes over the death of the
term as record, the one archaically passive, the other have
is staiid-alone text—what centuries of civilization
archaicallY physical. The record, not the remix, instead is an
of - ‘‘_knowii as the book. What Kelly envisions
the anomaly toda The remix is the very nature the world’s
‘JI infinitely interconnected media in which all
the digital. what lie
ooks are digitally scanned and linked together:
s view, the
heed calls the ‘hiquid version” of the book. In Kelly’
Top students at Britain’s Oxford University are annotating a
an newspa act of cutting and pasting and linking and
ing Gibson’s advice; in June 2006, the Guardi of the book
ion was “tinder text is as or more important than the writing
per reported that the university’s reputat literary version of ‘ikiped.
in the first place. It is the
of work from
threat as students increasingly copied slabs ii Mailers, Mire
own.” A survey Instead of traditional books by the Norma
the Internet and submitted it as their embrace, accord
Walkers, and Johiti Updikes, we should
54 percent of ‘I
published in Education Week found that communal. digital
ing to Kelly. a single, hvperlinked, U.
Internet. And m
students admitted to plagiarizing from the 0
annotated by amateurs. C
text that is edited and n
are telling the
who is to know if the other 46 percent Kelly s liquid ver 0
So what happens when you combine
to Ibse all mean [
truth? Copyright and authorship begin get a million penguinS.
sion of the book with a ‘iki? \u
reinixings on the
ing to those posting their mash-ups and L
24
 y’s Jan- The Cost of Democratization
‘l’hat’s actually the title of Dc Moniford Universit ‘
V
1
!.jc I
ri
nary 2007 “wiki-novel,” a democratic literary expe the
h This blurring of lines between the audience and
ment sponsored by the British publisher Penguin, whic
onlinp noveL author, bet*It fet arid tit between invention arid
invites anyone to contribute to a collective ,beet,v ‘ it of •! ot’t ‘

voices crc realits

But can a collaboration of amateur leterniinp the
dh’ teur li
authoritative, coherent fictional narrative? 1 ‘;ffprf’,fp ‘dcr art! ‘‘ een artist
bet’
wrotm
Penguin blogger and literary critic Jon Elek tr k.’ cut, between
d becoming V -
V
be happy so long as it manages to avoi pert V
i’ e* toe of the quail
tale’’’
- A frican- nit
sort of robotic-zombie-assassins-against it- ‘titv of ‘‘ i,tform,ti e receive, thereby
tliiiig.”
in-space-narrated-by-a-Papal -Tiara type of if n”t ott” , our national
that are undr
It is not just our aesthetic sensibilities
ium of choice
assault. The Internet has become the med t perliat’ the 2.0
politicians ot’
for distorting tile truth about politics and Olin!! are
,,tSil1(S nit r’ products, real
k on Joint Kerry’s V

both sides of the fence. The 2004. attac ces, and s, as 1 iscuss in Chap
t
ple. w qrçes
Swift Boat reordjn Vietnam, for exam 1 news

and 5. EvI md I I lahm’t laid-off

gers who painterl
tratedbyjmndredsof conservative blog reporter. or
batt I rtipt ‘pendetit bookstore is a
nt Litr ‘1-
V
apatrLgt,icmeriCafl public serva asj h1Vrcse ‘ted Internet cotitetit—
o
thence of
And what lnt the left-i advert n ‘uiiibes free music
ts(S free
f!i jp,..!i’r
r.. ‘hi.
sphere’s assaul ip theswV L:
crat tidut
V
V
%Vnu
Lieberinan, the centrist E )‘rno Jfl cahize at is free is actit
lt
tush-I’ ‘.
up
;s a rig s’
V
who attackers dressed itig ortune. The new iimers—Google.
rostitI ill he 200f
warmongering Republican, ‘t,’l tttw re, Crai!ist, and the hundreds of
on
‘in the lection.
V
mary (he, of course, svent lngrv for ‘
of the Web 2.!) pie—are
vindicating himself in the ei tie industries they are help
.coui, i
from MoveOn.org to Swiftvets den’ ii terms of products prod
uced. iobs a
r,!.

ies and H
it’: of 1 I’
conferred. By a.
issues or address the ambiguit t, re’ ic generated, or benefits C
I,
increasing partisan ni gs and wikis are dcci Vt
0
tics. Instead, they cater to an ur
evc’halls, tlt
a
rilgital m ‘ta to ohfe and lacritig sic,
twws—
ga

ity that uses “deinocratii’’” ti i og lie publi’h ing, inti

r
‘tuto
.ç
truth and manipulate pub C
 I
industries that created the original content those Web
sites “aggregate.” Our culture is essentially cannibaliz
ing its young, destroying the very sources of the content
they crave. Can that be the new business model of the
twenty- first century?
A Business 2.0 July 2006 cover story asked who are the
fifty people “who matter most” iii the new economy
Leading the list was not Steve Jobs or Rupert Murdoch
or Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the two founders of
j one less paid listing in a local newaper. Every visit to
Google. It was “YOU! The Consumer as Creator”:
\on—or rather, the collaborative intelligence of
tens of millions of people, the networked you—
continually create and filter new forms of content.
anointing the useful, the nleva,it. and the amusing
and rejecting the rest. . . .
In every case, you’ve
become au integral part ol the action as a member
of the aggregated, interactive, self-organizing, auto-
entertaining audience.
Who was Time magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year?
Was it George W Bush, or Pope Benedict XVI, or Bill Gates
and Warren Buffett, who together contributed more than
$70 billion of their wealth to improving life on earth?
II
0
E
None of the above. Time gave the award to YOU:
0 notion. But even if one accepts Anderson’s dubious eco
U
0 Yes, you. \ou control the Information Age. Wel
z hole. Anderson assumes that raw talent is as infinite as
‘I
U
come to your world.
This same YOU! rules Wikipedia, where the knowledge
consumer is also the knowledge creator. YOU! defines
YouTube, where the tens of thousands of daily videos are
both produced and watched by one and the same. Y( )I J!
are both ordering and reviewing books on Amazon.com,
bidding and auctioning goods on eBay, buying and design
ing video games on Microsoft’s Xbox platform, and listing
and responding to advertisements on Craigslist.
Of course, eyr free listing on Craigslist. means
Wikipedia’s free information hive means one less cus
tomer for a professionally researched and edited encyclo
pedia such as Britannica. Every free music or video
upload is one less sale of a CD or DVD, meaning one Less
royalty for the artist who created it.
In his recent bestselling book The Long Tail,’ 11 ire’d
magazine editor Chris Anderson celebrates this flatten
ing of culture, which he describes as the end of the hit
parade; In Anderson’s brave new world, there will he
infinite shelf space for infinite products, thus giving
everyone infinite choice. The Long Tail virtually rede
fines the word “economics”—shifting it from the science
of scarcity to the science of abundancy, and promising an
infinite market in which we cycle and recycle our ciii
tural production to our hearts’ content. It’s a seductive
•1
a
nomic arguments, the Long Tail theory has a glaring a
C
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0
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“_ i if-’
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infrastructure of traditional med ia—die scot its, the

the shelf space at :InazoTi or eBa But while there may agents. the editors, the publicists, the teclitticiatis.
(lie
be infinite typewriters, there is a scarcity of talent, marketers. Talent is built by the intermçj.j.s. ii von
expertise. experience, and mastery in any given field. away wit Ii
“diWtertneliite’ these layers, then von (to
Finding and nurturing true talent in a sea of amateurs the development of talent, too.
may be the real challenge in today’s VSEeb 2.0 world.
The
The economies of The Long ihil are (lead wrong.
fact is. Anderson’s vision of a hitless, flatten
ed media is a
Technology utopians like Anderson suggest that self-
self-fulfilling prophecy. Without the nurturing of talent, created content will somehow result in an endless village
there will, indeed, be no more hits, as the talent that cre of buyers and sellers, each bityitig a little and clioosiiig
ates them is never nourished or permitted to shine. from an extraordinary number of tliiitgs. But the niore
Thda; on a Web where everyone has an equal voice, self-created content that gets dumped onto the Internet.
the
the words of the wise titan count for no more than the harder it becomes to distinguish the good front the
as -
mutterings of a fool. Sure, all of us have opinions; but bad—and to make money on any of it. As Trevor Butter
special getting
I discuss more fully in Chapter 2, few of us have worth reported in the Financial Times. nobody is
te Ztiiiiga,
training, knowledge, or hands-on experience to genera rich from blogging, not even Markos Mouhitsas
the Yew all the
any kind of real perspective. Thomas Friedman, the founder of the Daily Kos, the Ixiost popular of
Middle East
York Times columnist, and Robert Fisk, the political blogs.
aper, for par
ern correspondent of the independent newsp Take the case of GoFugVourself.roni. a celebrity
blog—thev Ut H) visitors a
example. didn’t hatch from some obscure oth site attracting a huge audience of I VH
East by gelierat lug
acquired their itt-depth knowledge of the Middle da3 According to Butterwortli, the site is otilv
considerable e sites like
spending years in the region. This involved “beer money” for its founders. .-bove-averag
both the visitors a day,
investments of time and resources, for which JazzHouston.coin, which attracts I 2,tHH)
they work for, iii ad revellue
journalists themselves, and the newspapers bring in peanuts—around $1 H)() a year
deserve to be remunerated. aki, author oh
from (;oogle.” Titeti there’s ( ; Kawas
the needle in hittertiet, whose m
Talent, as ever, is a limited resource, one of die rily most popular blogs on the
4
find the talented. million times a
today’s digital haystack. You won’t pages were viewed almost two and a half
4
pajamas behind a Kawasaki earn iii ad revenue a.
trained individual shipwrecked in his iii 2(11)6. And how izuichi did C

s or anonv propertv Just $,53I ):‘ii• this 0

computer, churning out inane blog posting in 2006 off this hot media
t requires work. that offers ito one a pib.
mous movie reviews. Nurturing talen is Anderson’s long tail, it is a tail
s the complex
capital. expertise, investment. It require
 tchie )rograhl1nhing, but tile downsi(Ie is tltii hits WI) I
At best, it will provide the monkeys with pt’anhits and beer.
ensure that such niches generate less and less revenue.
‘l’he real challenge in Anderson’s long tail market of
11w more specialized the niche. the narrower the mar
infinite shelf space is finding what to read, listen to. or
ket. hit’ narrower the market, the more shoestring tiit’
watch. If you think the choice in your local record store ol
production budget, which compromises tile quality
is daunting. then just wait till the long tail uncoils its infi
tue pr)gra1nining, hirthier reducing the audience and
nite length. Trawling through the blogosphere, or the
alienating tile advertisers.
millions of bands on MvSpace, or the tens of millions of lit
One exahtipie of this dark cycle is NBC’s aLtehilI)t
videos on YouTube for the one or two blogs or songs or t in i iii -

21)06 to crea e exclusive interactive Interne

videos with real value isn’t viable for those of us with a iso
tni
i des
iii- e
isodt’s of the SitcOm lhe OflU’L’. ihe 1
1
c
life or a full-time job. The one resource that is challenged afford
were so underfunded that NBC couldn’t even
all the more by this long tail of amateur content is our ‘I’V critic
to cast Steve Card), the star of show. As one
time—the most limited and precious resource of all. remain
saul, it looked like ‘outtakes swept up front the
Yes, a number of Web 2.1) start-ups such as Pandora. I • J
t ‘ ( I) S
dci biti.”
corn, Goombah.corn, and Moodlogic.com are building frag
Network television is already grappling with the
artificially intelligent engines auppçdlv can auto r slices.
meiltatloat of the audience into thinner and thinne
- --S
maticallv tell us what music or movies we will like. But mcii and ‘[V
No In 21)06, NBC developed video sites for gay
artificial intelligence is a poor substitute for taste. Web citaimitci
in a junkies, and CBS introduced an interactive
software can replace the implicit trust we place dedicated to
A. 0. for teenagers and another (Showbuzz.comn)
movie review by Nigel :iidrews (Financial Times), s Network. in
Thrker), eittertaiiimnemtt news and gossip. The Scripp
Scott (Vew )rk Times). Anthony Lane (Aw viewership, also
tfully a desperate attempt to expand its total
or Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Timcs)—a though narrow sub
rain introduced video channels for increasingly
crafted review, ried Lw decades of education healths’ t.ating.
jects. from woodworking to quilting to
experience. No algorithm can every one of us.
the Lon Where does it end? With a channel for
match the literary analysis of the reviewers at aster and the sole I.

the wealth of in which we are the solitary broadc

don or the New )* Review of Books, nor on ott the most a
y...
.....

at magazines audience? ‘(‘his voukl he democratizati

..
.....

•.
-
Is
musical knowledge espoused by reviewers absurd conclusion is hot pure a
C
fumi!el1tihhai.!. Such an n
like Rolling Stone, Ja:th. or Gramophone. FO() Camp 21,1)4, Vl) 0
space of the fantasy. in time short unit’ since
Chris Anderson is right to say the infinite self-generated coil-
unities for 2.11’s nar(’issistic. self-congratulatory,
Internet will afford more and more opport
 2004,
tent revolution has exploded. Before September
s like
there was no louTube, and author-generated site
ley
Wikipedia and MySpace were well-kept Silicon Val
sa
secrets. 1day. we are watching a hundred million clip
3, has
(lay on \buTube, and MvSpace, founded in July 200 2
ost
over iiinety-eight million profiles. There are now alm
ens,
infinite social media sites for teens. pre-teens, post-te
and, as we will see, even fake teens. the noble amateur
r
The bioggers and the podcasters have taken ove our
iPods.
computers, our Internet-enabled cell phones, our
now
‘Vhat was once just a weird Silcoii Valley cult is
transforming America.
3,
In a cartoon that appeared in The .Vew )rke’r in 199
on the alf of sonic
two dogs sit beside a computer. One has his paw very revolution is celebrated on beh
calk Web 2.0 revo
keyboard; tile other is looking up at him quizzi seemingly noble abstraction. And the
rd reas
“On the Internet,” the dog using the keyboa traction behind
lution is no different. The noble abs
’re a Dog.”
sures his canine friend. “nobody knows you noble amateur.
ublish the digital revolution is that of the
That is more true than ever. On today’s self-p over breakfast with
I first heard this phrase in 21J04,
ilig Internet, nobody knows
if ou’re a dog, a inonke or me that these “noble
a frieiid of O’Reilk lie had told
ryone else is too what, with a wave of his
the Easter Bni,iiy ‘l’hat’s because eve amateurs” would democratize
winian strug rship of expertise.” ‘l’he
busy ego-casting, too immersed iii the Dar coffee cup, lie called “the (lictato
. mely’ democratic conse
gle for mind-share, to listen to anyone else Web 2.0 was the most “aweso
irs on some , lie said. It would (‘hlange
But we can’t blame this sad stale of affa quueiuce of the digital revolution
other species. We human beings hog
the limelight on
the world kirever.
We are siinulta of experts, we’ll Iiae a
this new stage of democratized media. “So instead of a dictatorship
producers. its l
neouslv its amateur writers, its amateur ht have responded. Ills idea
(lictatorship of idiots.” I mig
auidie,ice. like more Silicon alIey
amateur teclniiciaiis, auth. yes, its amateur of the “tioble amateur” seemed
ience is 110W eiiberatit imnuseuise.
Amateur hour has arrived, and the aud chatter, just uimore irrationally
— running the show.