Why does Andrew Keen never smile?

Last night I went to the ‘Globaliseringslezing’ in Felix Meritis in Amsterdam. Andrew Keen lectured there under the title ‘Wisdom of the crowd’. After his lecture both Karin Spaink and Michael Polman countered Mr. Keen’s lecture to be followed by a debate chaired by José van Dijck, professor of media culture at the UvA.

The day before the lecture I did follow the VPRO Tegenlicht documentary ‘Wiki’s truth’ as an entree. Keen’s lecture largely underlined what the documentary showed. A man with very strong opinions on the threats of Web 2.0 technology to the worldwide society. To democracy and freedom. Big statements made on the lack of journalistic integrity and quality that the ‘amateur blogging community’ displays. A community that does not produce quality articles and views but is merely an ever growing selection of second rate would be writers, artist and such. Also WikiPedia being an online vehicle for non-confirmed would be scientists to produce unchecked information and knowledge without moderation or quality assurance. Thereby threatening scientific society. Mr. Keen is strong in judgemental one liners that put all involved in a position of second rate contributors of second rate content that distorts the Internet. Mr. Keen did not smile once.

After Andrew Keen’s lecture, Karin Spaink countered his views strongly by first agreeing on some of the remarks made by Mr. Keen but quickly fighting his approach to the subject in a similar barrage of one liners, being very entertaining in the act. After this she dove into the arguments of Mr. Keen, one by one countering them. She spoke about the ability that Web 2.0 technology offers to authors and artists to make their work available for the masses through a medium that’s widely accessible and is not governed by gatekeepers that do not select on proper aspects but on what they think is commercially interesting. Thereby holding writers and other artist in a ‘copyright’ squeeze that leaves the creators with an inproper portion of the commercial results of what they produce. She also spoke about how Wikipedia and other Web 2.0 driven platforms deliver to groups of people sharing a special interest. Or those simply in need of a easy accessible social platform. She underlined the importance of some of these platforms in the ’social fabric’ of relationships for those groups and communities. This is especially true for people who need to be emancipated or desire to share knowledge with their peers, like people suffering from specific illnesses. She did not fight the arguments on the need for people to learn to check on the information they gather through the Net but she was optimistic on the ability of people to do so. In fact she showed confidence in people and society in using these new technologies for the better. Like is has always been with new technologies that came available to man. Karin smiled a lot, as always.

Mr. Polman underlined the importance of Web 2.0 technology for societies on the southern hemisphere. How these technologies can help developing countries and peoples to higher levels on a scale never experienced before. He did underline the necessity of educating users of the Net in consuming the information they gather on the Net. Apart from this his contribution sounded over optimistic and had much of a sales pitch for Web 2.0. He does have commercial interest in this so I suppose that is not so strange. He too smiled, but more as friendly salesperson.

After the lectures there was the discussion, triggered by questions from the audience. To be honest, this part of the evening was slightly disappointing as discussion often ended up in the use of rhetoric’s rather than really discussing on the arguments of the counterparts. First part of the discussion showed a mechanism that I would describe as ‘Keen bashing’. Not very strong, but by the forceful interrupting by Mr. Keen, who apart from never smiling also never leaves anyone to finish an argument properly, the discussion became a bit emotional. In fact it became a shouting match of intellectuals not listening to arguments but fighting a match on sheer vocal volume. The chair unfortunately also became contester in the end by participating in the discussion on the last questions from the audience. It left the discussion as a poor part of the evening, not adding much to what was already said and certainly not on the academic level is was planned to be… I suppose.

Apart from this little derailment the evening did bring a few things to my mind during the discussion. Mr. Keen talked about the demise of the music business. Actually he was talking about the traditional conglomerate based commercialized and monopolized music business. He did not once hinted on the upcoming of podfree music, non commercial music productions and alternative distribution scheme’s. He even did not mention the succes of Apple’s iTunes Music Store that last week overshadowed K-Mart in the US as the largest music distributor worldwide in sales numbers. He did not mention the simple fact that never ever before such a vast amount of music had been distributed as during last year, through the internet! Instead he defended the old copyrights system as being protective to artists. This simplistic view is proven wrong many times before. He did not go into the aspect of copyrights on medicine that prevents people to receive AIDS blockers in some countries as a result of monopolies of the pharmaceutical industry. This last move was by the way very good as he explained not to know about the subject enough. A move rare seen during last night’s discussion.

There’s much to say about this evening. It was interesting and at times entertaining. I was impressed by both Andrew Keen and Karin Spaink. I also found myself not able to really relate to the scared views of Andrew Keen. In fact, after a while I got a bit fed up with the repeated technology bashing of a man that obviously lost the race for commercial success in the Internet arena. And who tragically also has lost touch with the implementation of current technology developments. No one talked about the arrival of Web 3.0 that brings the interactive Web 2.0 based internet to another level by using artificial intelligence technologies to deliver tailor made web content to people on a level that we can hardly begin to understand. Only Karin touched on the subject of governmental abuse of technology by robbing identity information from it’s citizens. The subject was, alas, not discussed properly. I left the evening feeling as ambiguous as I came having observed a partially background discussion on technology that is there to stay and expand. I missed views on how this technology could be embraced instead of fought against, like man has done ever since the invention of the wheel. I do acknowledge the dangers made explicit by Andrew Keen and I do share the enthusiasm of Karin Spaink as a user of that technology to be able to raise a voice against social injustice and for emancipation. I feel slightly sympathetic to Mr. Polman’s endeavours in making technology available to third world countries (sorry for the old fashioned term).

In the foyer I had the opportunity to speak shortly to Andrew Keen after he kind of accidentally crushed my leg while I was drinking a beer at a table. He actually smiled when I asked him why he didn’t smile during his lecture and the following on stage discussion. He’s less grumpy than he seems and therefore it’s a shame that he does not show a smile on stage. It would make his arguments stronger and people would be less invited to attack him as that was the red thread through the evening. A man scared of technology that he does not control, being attacked by those Dutch individualistic non-conformistic people. A man under attack because of his explicit fear based thoughts.

Alice © 2008