Isn’t he just one of the iPolloi?

The argument that should have been central to the book- it isn’t- is that the profusion of content that web 2.0 brought eventually will lead to the innability of people to filter that content except through, paradoxically, a few well placed opinion makers that will have a great value to corporate interest as it happens today with all the Gadget websites.
Its size may be its biggest enemy.

Other than that I think Keen’s gratuituous polemic approach is less an alert than a well placed marketing strategy for the huge market of the outraged blogger out there.

and ironicially, youll be making his points to another group of 10 year younger web 3.0 pundits all trying to get that same invited dinner speech or paycheck for your “genius” in the world.

maybe we should age in reverse physically like a bad sci fi story, we seem to be doing it mentally.

Wha..wha..what?

So wait, because people give away their labor and work and allow the community to create that prevents people with elite knowledge or skill from profiting from it? Can you please point out where their ordination as “elite” confers on them some special status or monopoly? Can we look forward to Elite Affirmative Action to ensure that your elite still have their place at the table?

PS. Keen was formerly CEO of “Bubble” casualty AudioCafe, and (in some research is saw regarding a seminar he spoke at in 2000) as having developed the first successfull (financial) business model for the web.

Sounds like sour grapes to me.

elite knowledge is nothing more than information imbalance. web 2.0 is the rebalancing of “elitists” hording information to promote their self-worth.

as for “elite skills”, well, i really only see web 2.0 as an enabler, talent and skill will always bubble up to the surface, elitist or not. web 2.0 isn’t going to better position an average doctor to operate on me, but it might lead to generating a more transparent infrastructure for cross-reviews to highlight the more qualified.

you hear noise, i hear symphonies… and i can agree to disagree, bennett.

I blog, to answer your rude question, on subjects about which I have expertise when I see an excess of misinformation flowing around the place, either in Big Old Bad Media or in Citizen’s Narcissistic Media. Specifically that expertise is in the field of network design and in politics. So I blog because I have elite knowledge and have done so since 1996.

The analogy between the destructive works of intellectual property communists and over-hypers and Mao’s cadres is pretty straightforward: they seek to prevent people with elite knowledge or elite skill from profiting by it. Lessig wants to dismantle intellectual property rights, and O’Reilly wants to undermine legitimate software businesses.

In the highly-complex world in which we live, we need to have better ways for experts to share their insights, and raising the noise level in the room doesn’t do that.

how exactly is the work of lessig, o’reilly, et al equivalent to breaking the fingers of concert pianists? i’m consulting with a very large web site — old school — who is now using CC licensed images from flickr instead of paying $500 per image. to me, that sounds like socialized capitalism; giving exposure to *talent* and moving away from a middle-man system that *cashes in on talent*

why do you blog?

This so-called Web 2.0 is a menace to a free and democratic society because it’s driven by that sort of mind set. Significant work is being done by highly skilled protocol engineers to redesign the plumbing of the Internet to make it more suitable for the needs of the current century. That legitimate work is called Internet 2.0, and the con artists have ripped off that name in order to try and create something like Bubble 2.0.

I want no part of such an exercise.

Not sure how else to frame it.

You are right that there are more respectful tones for complaining about the innovation going on.

Thanks for your response. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to myself on these threads.

is the issue that more people are blogging, podcasting, vlogging, etc. so there’s too much to sift through? or possibly that we’ve become caught up in the tidal wave of options and feel like we need to be plugged in 24/7? have we become information addicts, preparing to raise a generation of “infobabys?”

if we couldn’t unplug for a respit now and then, yes, i too would be somewhat concerned. analog has it’s place, but this isn’t the essay that keen wrote. his writing was steeped in rhetoric, pointing fingers at innovators; people with both vision and empathy. it was really low brow, but i guess that’s your point on two levels, no?

But the big question of people shouting and continuing to shout is still open. I find myself listening too much sometimes, and I’m scared that trend may get worse.

Being an elitist isn’t always about being a snob; sometimes it’s about being scared, justifiably so. Change isn’t always fun or good.

and who said anything about joe shmo operating on me? we’re talking avenues of expression here, not a holiday inn express commercial.

For sure the Web 2.0 crowd exagerrates its worth and likewise Keen overrates its negatives.

As for the utopian hippy commi’s….I think the internet is in the process of disembowelling them.

Democracy may be a fine thing in principle, but in practice it’s often deadly wrong. Citizen media can’t seem to differentiate experts and frauds in any of the subject areas where I have enough knowledge to tell the difference, and I doubt if it does anywhere else either.

Web 2.0 is basically just the latest bid by Tim O’Reilly and friends for the lunch money of all the pimply-faced geeks with a bad attitude toward authority, and it saddens me to find anybody taking it seriously.

I liked Keen’s argument, even though it was over the top. All that stuff about Marx and the defense of what are clearly rotten media organizations are problematic.

The question of whether everyone speaking will mean no one listens is deep; the question of what constitutes “equality” goes very far, esp. if equality depends on institutions that are undermined (ironically enough) by the drive for more and more equality. The question of what media institutions are in essence, and what their role is in rewarding talent or being visible manifestations of what we need to agree on before we debate anything is, again, critical.

I’m an elitist, so I don’t assume the future will be better as more people are empowered. I hope as more people are empowered they will act responsibly, and things will be better. But I don’t bet on it, and I don’t assume it to be true.

Fire away but understand this: you can win this argument verbally, but because blogging is so decentralized, its future depends on how its used. If it is used badly, people like Keen won’t just have been right, won’t just have been prescient — they’ll have their hands on a Truth which puts an end to hope. Right now I think the questions they raise are fair, and need to be taken very seriously - the hopes we have for this blogging thing are not something to be squandered.

his U2 example kills me. if he could only remove himself from his own reflective subjectivity, he’d recognize that hip-hop has been 2.0 since mix tapes were being hawked from the truncks of beat up caddys. that communal hustle brought us KRS-One and countless other teachers — each a relative U2 in their own right, and none marketed by traditional factories of mainstream media.

A pimary difference is that marxism is compulsory while the gift economy is not- and that’s a huge difference. (I am far from being an economist or anthropologist- it might be worthwhile for someone who is to compare and contrast actual primitive gift economies to Web 2.0 to see if the metaphor is valid or can offer any additional insights.)

The problem for the media elites then is in trying to sell things that many others are giving away for free. I think they’ve already lost out in the opinion market, but as is known, everyone has one of those, so that was the easiest. I have doubts about video though. It takes a big investment in time and effort. On the other hand, have you seen some of these amateur Star Trek productions? Some of them a quite good.

In any case, the fact that everyone who wants to contribute can doesn’t mean that interest in these contributions will be uniform. Quality stuff will be sought out and rise to the top.

The real issue is not the liberation of publishing, but the ability for material to be found. Retrieval is the problem that has never been solved. It’s why we have so much advertising. Producers have to try everything in order to reach their potential customers. Marketing is just as important for the world of ideas as for toothpaste. I don’t see any good solution. Just look at the poor results that pop musicians have had reaching their audience without the large corporate promotion machines.

We have solved the first half of the information flow using the new technology of the internet, but we’re stuck on the second half.