Creative Revolution or the Assault on Culture?

by Borys Stokalski

Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur pours buckets of cold water onto the heads of Web 2.0 enthusiasts, accusing them of "worshipping the creative amateur" -- regardless of how poorly educated and inarticulate they may be. Keen contends that the vast majority of content delivered by such creative amateurs is of desperately low quality -- and, at the same time, of overwhelmingly large quantity. Keen's lament on this "assault on culture" seems justified, as far as the facts he uses are concerned. But there may be more to this flood of semiartistic content than what Keen pictures as some kind of "culture-cide."