Enough! The Briton who is challenging the web’s endless cacophony

Andrew Keen finds himself in the eye of a storm. The author and entrepreneur has stunned his adopted country with a book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy, that accuses bloggers and other evangelists for the web of destroying culture, ruining livelihoods and threatening to make consumers of new media regress into ‘digital narcissism’. Keen questions the euphoria surrounding the rise of citizen journalism, online communities such as MySpace and user-generated websites including online encyclopedia Wikipedia and video-sharing site YouTube. On his own blog last week, Keen noted growing support for his views: ‘It’s game on. Now the fun begins.’ Oliver Kamm, an author and columnist, has accused bloggers of ‘poisoning debate’. Blogger Kathy Sierra called for an end to the culture of online abuse after going into hiding because of death threats on other blogs. Tim O’Reilly, who coined the phrase ‘Web 2.0’, and Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, proposed a code of conduct including a stipulation that people not say anything online ‘that we wouldn’t say in person’.

Andrew Keen finds himself in the eye of a storm. The author and entrepreneur has stunned his adopted country with a book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy, that accuses bloggers and other evangelists for the web of destroying culture, ruining livelihoods and threatening to make consumers of new media regress into ‘digital narcissism’. Keen questions the euphoria surrounding the rise of citizen journalism, online communities such as MySpace and user-generated websites including online encyclopedia Wikipedia and video-sharing site YouTube. On his own blog last week, Keen noted growing support for his views: ‘It’s game on. Now the fun begins.’ Oliver Kamm, an author and columnist, has accused bloggers of ‘poisoning debate’. Blogger Kathy Sierra called for an end to the culture of online abuse after going into hiding because of death threats on other blogs. Tim O’Reilly, who coined the phrase ‘Web 2.0’, and Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, proposed a code of conduct including a stipulation that people not say anything online ‘that we wouldn’t say in person’.http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2068107,00.html

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