Andrew Keen's Next Book Will Attack the Social Web

Liz Gannes — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:15:55 +0000

In his latest attack against where the Web is going, author and provocateur Andrew Keen now accuses social media of wrenching away its users’ individuality.

Where Keen’s last book took on user-generated content and Web 2.0, his upcoming “Digital Vertigo” will challenge what some people like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman call Web 3.0: Ubiquitous personal data.

“Most of all, (the new book is) an attack on the social,” Keen said today in an interview outside the Techonomy conference in Tucson, Ariz.

[ See post to watch video ]

Web users have fallen in love with “the illusion of community,” Keen argued — and in doing so, have given away their secrecy, privacy and individuality.

Keen said influences on “Digital Vertigo” include John Stuart Mills’s “On Liberty” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” That’s because Mills described how the Industrial Revolution harmed the individual, and Hitchcock depicted the ruination of a man’s life when he fell in love with a woman who didn’t exist.

It all sounds terribly dramatic, doesn’t it?

Keen’s previous book, “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture,” was a divisive critique of blogs, Wikipedia, Google and other user-generated content for dumbing down society.

“Digital Vertigo” is to be released in May 2012.

Kara Visits the Tech Policy Summit: Content

Kara Swisher — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:42:15 +0000

Last week, I appeared at the second annual Tech Policy Summit, held in Hollywood, which covered a wide range of important issues related to digital topics and public policy.

The one on content was titled, “How New Media Is Changing Content Creation and Distribution.” Conclusion: A lot!

I did video interviews after the session with two of the three panelists: Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder and CEO of JibJab Media; and Andrew Keen, author of the book, “Cult of the Amateur” (the other panelist was Jonathan Taplin, longtime entrepreneur and now a professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication).

Both Spiridellis and Keen discuss the changing nature of content and how new media will pay for itself.

Here’s the video (and here is another video I made for a panel I also moderated, on privacy):

[ See post to watch video ]

AllThingsD » Andrew Keen

Andrew Keen's Next Book Will Attack the Social Web

Kara Visits the Tech Policy Summit: Content