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Andrew Keen

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Andrew Keen at the Online Educa Berlin 2007

Andrew Keen (born circa 1960[1]) is a British-American entrepreneur, author, and self-proclaimed "leading contemporary critic of the Internet."[2]

Education

Keen was born in the Golders Green neighborhood of North London. He earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of London and then studied at the University of Sarajevo. He has earned a master's degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, studying under Ken Jowitt.

Education career

Keen has taught at Tufts University, Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts.[citation needed]

Internet career

Keen's Silicon Valley career began in 1995, with the founding of audiocafe.com,[3] which received funding from Intel and SAP. The firm folded in January 2000.[4] After the demise of audiocafe.com, Keen worked at Pulse 3D, SLO Media, Santa Cruz Networks, Jazziz Digital, Pure Depth and AfterTV, which he founded in 2005.[4][5]

Criticism of Web 2.0 and Wikipedia

Keen currently writes about media on his site thegreatseduction.com, which redirects to his blog. Keen also produces a podcast on AfterTV. His book The Cult of the Amateur, which is highly critical of free, user-based information-gathering Web sites such as Wikipedia, was published on June 5, 2007, by Doubleday Currency.[6] Praising Citizendium, a new project launched by Larry Sanger in 2006, he writes that the inclusion of editors with real names would be an improvement over user-generated content typical to Web 2.0.[citation needed] On August 16, 2007, Keen appeared on The Colbert Report to talk about the book. When called an elitist, he replied, "What's wrong with that?". When asked by Colbert if the internet was worse than the Nazis, Keen's response was that "even the Nazis didn't put artists out of work."

In The Weekly Standard, Keen wrote that Web 2.0 is a "grand utopian movement" similar to "communist society" as described by Karl Marx. He stated it "worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer. It suggests that everyone — even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us — can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves. Web 2.0 'empowers' our creativity, it 'democratizes' media, it 'levels the playing field' between experts and amateurs. The enemy of Web 2.0 is 'elitist' traditional media." He describes Free Culture proponent Lawrence Lessig as an "intellectual property communist".[7]

Personal life

He currently lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.[8]

References

  1. ^ Saracevic, Alan T. (October 15, 2006). Debate 2.0 / Weighing the merits of the new Webocracy. San Francisco Chronicle (“Age: 46”)
  2. ^ Keen, Andrew. "About Andrew Keen". Andrew is indeed the leading contemporary critic of the Internet.
  3. ^ Andrew Keen bio
  4. ^ a b "Andrew Keen - .net magazine". Retrieved 2008-01-03.
  5. ^ About AfterTV
  6. ^ Keen, Andrew (2007). The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World is Assaulting Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values. Doubleday Currency, ISBN 978-0385520805
  7. ^ Keen, Andrew (May 16, 2006). Web 2.0; The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It's worse than you think. The Weekly Standard
  8. ^ Balicki, Robert (February 21, 2007).Blogging Berkeley. The Daily Californian

Further reading

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