The Cult of the Amateur, by Andrew Keen

Andrew Keen jokingly describes himself as a "failed dotcom entrepreneur" and an "apostate". This attack on the culture of the web is framed with the confidence and knowledge that befits a man who was, in a past life, an enthusiastic Silicon Valley disciple. His moment of epiphany came at a camp seminar, with 200 other main players from the Silicone Valley scene.

The seminar, which took place in 2004, was held to discuss and celebrate the dawning of what the gathering called "Web 2", (which fundamentally means the web with broadband access). The participants would have been in jubilant and victorious mood, as many of them would have endured hardship and vilification after the dotcom crash a couple of years earlier. Keen describes the camp as being run on "Wikipedia style participatory principles". By that he means that everyone talked a lot, and no one was in charge. "The camp, I realised, was a sneak preview [of what was to come on the internet]. It was a beta version of the Web 2 revolution, where Wikipedia met MySpace met YouTube. Everyone was simultaneously broadcasting themselves but nobody was listening." Since then Keen has closely observed Web 2. He has certainly seen the "din of narcissism" swell in the last couple of years.

His major concern is that the Web 2 is wreaking cultural and economic havoc. Keen argues that, thanks largely to the amateur ethos that is so prevalent on the internet, expertise and, therefore, knowledge, wisdom and culture are fast being eroded. He seems to think that this applies especially to journalism and the arts (particularly music and literature). Additionally, Keen feels that the reliability and truthfulness of all sorts of websites, in regard to their content, is to be doubted. Wikipedia in particular comes in for severe criticism.

He cites a case where a scientist was critical of numerous postings made by another "citizen editor" in his specialist field. Wikipedia apparently judged that the expert's opinion was no more valid than anybody else's, and duly restricted him to one entry a day.

Keen spots the obvious philosophical dangers in seeing the "truth" as something that is purely consensual to the Wikipedia (or any other) " online community". "What if the community decides that two plus two equals four the same way it decides what an apple is; by consensus? Yes, that means that if the community changes its mind and decides that two plus two equals five, then two plus two does equal five."

Wikipedia is currently one of the most highly trafficked sites on the net. It is probably most people's first port of call when they wish to gain access to a database of encyclopaedic knowledge. Keen compares the popularity of Wikipedia with the relatively impoverished state of the internet arm of Encyclopaedia Brittanica, where nearly 50 per cent of the staff were laid off a few years ago. At present Brittanica.com is ranked at 5,128 in the list of most visited sites. Wikipedia pays nothing to its massed ranks of amateur contributors, and only employs a handful of people, whereas Brittanica.com has to service 4,000 expert contributors (including 100 Nobel Prize winners) as well as the salaries of its full-time staff. Keen points out that every visit to Wikipedia's free service means one less customer for the professionally run Britannica. According to Keen, more redundancies are inevitable at Brittanica.com.

Keen also gives examples of the way "facts" change radically hour by hour on Wikipedia, in regard to contentious issues, as various " editors" pile in, one after the other to have their say. He states the obvious when advising great caution in regard to trusting the veracity of entries.

It is not only the "citizen editors" of Wikipedia that incur Keen's wrath; "citizen journalists" also suffer a mauling. Keen makes an analogy that ownership of a computer and a modem doesn't transform one into a serious journalist any more than having access to a kitchen makes one into a serious cook. He goes on to vilify the "millions of wannabe drudges that revel in their amateurism; flaunting their lack of training and formal qualifications as evidence of their calling". Keen notes the negative impact, both financially and editorially, that he believes online publications have had on newspapers, magazines and traditional broadcast media.

Blogs also get short shrift from the author. Keen mocks the notion that the blogosphere represents a return to the vibrant intellectualism inherent in London's coffee-house scene of the 18th century. He notes that Dr Johnson, Burke and Boswell didn't hide behind aliases, whereas most bloggers do. Keen refers to bloggers as "anonymous and self-obsessed". He ennumerates examples of companies, PR firms, and political organisations who use this very anonymity to take all sorts of liberties, from denigrating opponents to passing advertising off as user content on sites such as YouTube. YouTube itself comes under the spotlight when Keen discusses the contentious issue of intellectual property rights.

Keen quite reasonably calls for online porn and gambling to be regulated far more stringently than they are now. He also discusses sinister new technological developments, both within and outside Web 2, that have profound human rights and civil liberties implications.

Some of these complex issues surrounding Web 2 seem to be at odds with one another. On one hand, there are calls for less freedom and more control , and yet in other scenarios Keen and his ilk call for less control, and declare the importance of preserving the individual's freedom. In other words, control porn, gambling and the various forms of online predators, yet on the other hand protest against online (and possible offline) surveillance. The same arguments are very relevant to terrorism at the moment.

One difficult question that springs to mind in regard to the Web is " who plays the policeman?" (as far as Keen is concerned Google is the main bogeyman lurking in those dark and worrying areas of surveillance and control, and not just online either).

I have an idea that Keen will broach these dilemmas in a more exact and methodical manner in his next book. In essence, those dilemmas – freedom of the individual versus necessary social constraints – are not a new, web-inspired problem; they are as old as civilisation itself. The trouble with the web (2 or otherwise) is that the genie is now out of the bottle. Is it really possible to push it back in again in certain areas?

These are complex issues and everyone is talking at the same time. It's like the tower of Babel out there. However, Keen's voice is one to take heed of, along with other social commentators such as Naomi Klein and Morris Bermann. *

Nicholas Brealey £12.99