Friday, June 29, 2007

New York Times Review of The Cult of the Amateur

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: June 29, 2007

Digital utopians have heralded the dawn of an era in which Web 2.0 — distinguished by a new generation of participatory sites like MySpace.com and YouTube.com, which emphasize user-generated content, social networking and interactive sharing — ushers in the democratization of the world: more information, more perspectives, more opinions, more everything, and most of it without filters or fees. Yet as the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen points out in his provocative new book, “The Cult of the Amateur,” Web 2.0 has a dark side as well.

Catherine Betts
Andrew Keen
THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture
By Andrew Keen
228 pages.
Doubleday. $22.95.

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Mr. Keen argues that “what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.” In his view Web 2.0 is changing the cultural landscape and not for the better. By undermining mainstream media and intellectual property rights, he says, it is creating a world in which we will “live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes, and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising.” This is what happens, he suggests, “when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.”
This book, which grew out of a controversial essay published last year by The Weekly Standard, is a shrewdly argued jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political gatekeepers and replace experts with the “wisdom of the crowd.” Although Mr. Keen wanders off his subject in the later chapters of the book — to deliver some generic, moralistic rants against Internet evils like online gambling and online pornography — he writes with acuity and passion about the consequences of a world in which the lines between fact and opinion, informed expertise and amateurish speculation are willfully blurred.
For one thing, Mr. Keen says, “history has proven that the crowd is not often very wise,” embracing unwise ideas like “slavery, infanticide, George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Britney Spears.” The crowd created the tech bubble of the 1990s, just as it created the disastrous Tulipmania that swept the Netherlands in the 17th century.
Mr. Keen also points out that Google search results — which answer “search queries not with what is most true or most reliable, but merely what is most popular” — can be manipulated by “Google bombing” (which “involves simply linking a large number of sites to a certain page” to “raise the ranking of any given site in Google’s search results”). And he cites a recent Wall Street Journal article reporting that hot lists on social networking Web sites are often shaped by a small number of users: that at Digg.com, which has 900,000 registered users, 30 people were responsible at one point for submitting one-third of the postings on the home page; and at Netscape.com, a single user was behind 217 stories over a two-week period, or 13 percent of all stories that reached the most popular list in that period.
Because Web 2.0 celebrates the “noble amateur” over the expert, and because many search engines and Web sites tout popularity rather than reliability, Mr. Keen notes, it’s easy for misinformation and rumors to proliferate in cyberspace. For instance, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia (which relies upon volunteer editors and contributors) gets way more traffic than the Web site run by Encyclopedia Britannica (which relies upon experts and scholars), even though the interactive format employed by Wikipedia opens it to postings that are inaccurate, unverified, even downright fraudulent. This year it was revealed that a contributor using the name Essjay, who had edited thousands of Wikipedia articles and was once one of the few people given the authority to arbitrate disputes between writers, was a 24-year-old named Ryan Jordan, not the tenured professor he claimed to be.
Since contributors to Wikipedia and YouTube are frequently anonymous, it’s hard for users to be certain of their identity — or their agendas. Postings about political candidates, for instance, can be made by opponents disguising their motives; and propaganda can be passed off as news or information. For that matter, as Mr. Keen points out, the idea of objectivity is becoming increasingly passé in the relativistic realm of the Web, where bloggers cherry-pick information and promote speculation and spin as fact. Whereas historians and journalists traditionally strived to deliver the best available truth possible, many bloggers revel in their own subjectivity, and many Web 2.0 users simply use the Net, in Mr. Keen’s words, to confirm their “own partisan views and link to others with the same ideologies.” What’s more, as mutually agreed upon facts become more elusive, informed debate about important social and political issues of the day becomes more difficult as well.
Although Mr. Keen’s objections to the publishing and distribution tools the Web provides to aspiring artists and writers sound churlish and elitist — he calls publish-on-demand services “just cheaper, more accessible versions of vanity presses where the untalented go to purchase the veneer of publication” — he is eloquent on the fallout that free, user-generated materials is having on traditional media.
Mr. Keen argues that the democratized Web’s penchant for mash-ups, remixes and cut-and-paste jobs threaten not just copyright laws but also the very ideas of authorship and intellectual property. He observes that as advertising dollars migrate from newspapers, magazines and television news to the Web, organizations with the expertise and resources to finance investigative and foreign reporting face more and more business challenges. And he suggests that as CD sales fall (in the face of digital piracy and single-song downloads) and the music business becomes increasingly embattled, new artists will discover that Internet fame does not translate into the sort of sales or worldwide recognition enjoyed by earlier generations of musicians.
“What you may not realize is that what is free is actually costing us a fortune,” Mr. Keen writes. “The new winners — Google, YouTube, MySpace, Craigslist, and the hundreds of start-ups hungry for a piece of the Web 2.0 pie — are unlikely to fill the shoes of the industries they are helping to undermine, in terms of products produced, jobs created, revenue generated or benefits conferred. By stealing away our eyeballs, the blogs and wikis are decimating the publishing, music and news-gathering industries that created the original content those Web sites ‘aggregate.’ Our culture is essentially cannibalizing its young, destroying the very sources of the content they crave.”

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Litblogs Article

After reading Fred's post on The Cult of the Amateur and thinking about the article on litblogs he posted a while back, I am intrigued by this article from Village Voice. Amidst the discussion on how the Internet is affecting our culture and the worry that books are an unfortunate victim, it is interesting to think specifically about the proliferation of litblogs and their importance. I am still undecided if the decline in newspaper book reviews and reading in general, in favor of litblogs that appeal to casual word of mouth - and, some might say, unfortunately, populist fiction too - is good or bad.

This article says that people are still reading, just that the medium has become the Internet. Indeed, litbloggers even write book reviews for newspapers, as if literary blogs have become a farm system. I also find interesting that authors and publishers are capitalizing on this trend. There is a Virtual Book Tour, where authors make appearances on up to fifteen blogs in one day, and publishers even advertise on litblogs.


Book Smart

Could cyberspace be the novel's best friend? Litblogs take off—and grow up.

by Joy Press

The media have spent so much time gnashing their teeth over the influence of political bloggers that barely anyone has noticed something equally convulsive happening in the book realm. Despite the on-going panic about a contraction in both the audience for serious literature and the amount of mainstream print coverage books receive, literary conversation is erupting all over the Internet in the form of litblogs. Multiplying like the tribbles on Star Trek, these online journals suggest that reading is far from a dying pastime.

Literati are increasingly turning to the blogs for discussion, gossip, analysis, and a sense of community. Inevitably, publishers have noticed the power of these informal networks to generate word-of-mouth buzz—the holy grail of marketing—and are looking for ways to harness it. In turn, many bloggerati are on the verge of becoming that contradiction in terms, the professional enthusiast. So what happens now, when these amateurs are faced with the chance to wield influence and become insiders?

It takes five minutes to create a blog, and even the most successful litbloggers say they embarked on the whole thing casually—a kind of public doodle. Maybe they wanted to alert friends to cool articles and reviews, which is how Jessa Crispin of Bookslut started, or distract themselves from the impending war in Iraq, like Brooklyn blogger Maud Newton. Maybe they were bored or just plain procrastinating. But that non-professionalism is a big part of the appeal to readers—the off-the-cuff intimacy, the ornery opinions, the bloggers' ability to say whatever they think without worrying about editors reining them in.

"What people look for in a book blog is someone whose taste aligns with theirs and who can lead them to some good recommendations," says Crispin, a former librarian for Planned Parenthood in Chicago, "and that's where their power lies." Last month, a British survey suggested that nearly a third of those under 35 considered personal word of mouth the most important motivation for buying a book; only 6 percent based their purchase on ads. Over the years there have been plenty of attempts to bottle this transaction—for instance, amazon.com's "personalized" suggestions made by a computer. But blogs are much closer to the real thing. Delight and disappointment are transmitted in ways more akin to dinner-table banter than to a verdict delivered from on high.

"Publicists take note—people who love books are making pilgrimages to our sites and they're taking our word for things and buying books we recommend," wrote Mark Sarvas of the Elegant Variation in an online essay last year. An L.A.-based screenwriter with a novel in the works, Sarvas started his blog impulsively in 2003. But he began to see it as a forum for championing unsung writers. Now Sarvas wants to prove that these sites have clout. He has recruited 19 fellow bloggers to launch the Litblog Co-op, a virtual collective stretching across the country that will bestow attention on four books a year—literary books that would not, Sarvas promises, get review attention otherwise.

Sarvas is only one of several entrepreneurial minds eager to channel the power of the litblog. Kevin Smokler, editor of the forthcoming Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times, founded the now defunct site Central Booking in the '90s. His current side project is the Virtual Book Tour, in which authors spend one day making "appearances" on as many as 15 blogs. Sometimes they take over the site as guest bloggers; other times they are interviewed or contribute essays. (Smokler charges $1,500 for a one-day tour.) While he generally gets paid by the publisher or author, he says the host bloggers get no money—"just a free copy of the book, and if they're writers themselves, they get contact with the New York publishing industry. Paying them would open up an ethical hornet's nest, since there's no way we can expect bloggers to be impartial if we're paying them." Although Smokler says bloggers are under no obligation to praise these guests, Crispin chose not to participate because "to me, Virtual Book Tour means saying you give your stamp of approval to this book, even if you don't particularly like it." Sarvas, who met Smokler on a blogging panel, has hosted three tours and sees it as a pretty informal arrangement: "My feeling was, how much damage can someone do to my reputation in one day?"

Inspired by the promotional possibilities of an online book tour, Southern novelist and self-proclaimed "hype hag" Karin Gillespie launched her own informal Girlfriend Cyber Circuit. It consists of 21 female writers with blogs, each of whom agrees to host and publicize two or three fellow Girlfriends a month to bump up sales and name recognition. Gillespie admits that she doesn't always love the books she endorses on her site but says, "I would never say if I didn't like something!"

"Everyone's starting to grapple with those ethical issues," according to Ron Hogan of Beatrice, the literary-zine-turned-blog that started in 1994, way before the current wave. "It's that old punk rock question of authenticity versus assimilation." Hogan has spent a lot of time mulling over this stuff, having worked as a book reviewer in the '90s at the fledgling amazon.com. "With Amazon's increasing corporatization, we effectively became catalog copywriters. We knew we were there to sell books and we were grounded in that reality that even when you're in the media, the marketing and publicity departments are coming to you because they want to get featured. That's part of the equation for me, but it won't control my editorial decisions." He does worry that it's especially hard for litbloggers—almost always one-person operations—to erect a firewall between themselves and those who want something from them.

Publishers aren't just leaving it to the bloggers themselves: A few are trying to generate buzz by any means necessary. At the far end of the spectrum is viral-marketing company BzzAgent, which uses volunteers to covertly make recommendations to friends and create warm fuzzy feelings about literary novels like Meghan Daum's The Quality of Life Report and Adam Davies's The Frog King. Then there are some recent ads running on blogs, paid for by publishers, that try to tap into good word of mouth by linking to other blogs that have said positive things about a book (as in a recent blog ad for Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore) or to good reviews in print media.

Everyone has drawn his or her own ethical line in the sand. Bookslut declined to join either the Litblog Co-op or Virtual Book Tours, but it is one of the few litblogs with ads, many of them for small-press books. Crispin says she briefly panicked when she realized she wanted to write about a book that has an ad on her site, but then shrugged it off. "If people think I'm going to hawk a book in return for a $90 ad, they should probably read another blog! I'm glad we waited to take ads until now, though, because at first, we were so thrilled that someone sent us a free book that our choices were dictated by that." It can be a heady experience for a publishing outsider to be showered with advance copies, courted by publicists, and offered paid work in print media.

So many litbloggers are now writing book reviews in mainstream newspapers that Hogan jokingly suggests these sites now act as a farm team, just as fanzines once did. It's an idea that irritates Sarvas immensely: "I hope the Co-op can challenge the supremacy of print." He points out the positive effects of widespread blog admiration for a quirky novel such as Sam Lipsyte's Home Land, which became a darling of the realm earlier this year. "Its Amazon rating climbed through the roof while the blogs were covering it," says Sarvas, though he admits that "it also got reviews in some places like The New York Times, so it's hard to tell the direct influence of the blogs."

Lipsyte became aware of this blog love for Home Land during his book tour. "Bloggers in different cities showed up at readings and then wrote about it. I kept calling my publisher from the road excitedly and telling them all these people were writing about me, but I think the publicist thought I was crazy." He sees it as a case of good timing: "Bloggers started realizing that they could connect to each other and create a momentum"—just what the Litblog Co-op hopes to crystallize.

Several of the most established book sites—Maud Newton, Bookslut, and MobyLives—are not participating in the Co-op. Newton says she declined because she's already juggling a full load among her blog, a novel in progress, freelance book reviewing, and her day job. But she also argues that "the Co-op does something like what the media do—it creates a big push for a book. If their goal is to prove the influence of blogs to publishers, I think they'll succeed—but it's not a goal I share myself." Instead, she says she prefers the way ideas slowly percolate down to the reader, independent of publishing dates and industry agendas.

Crispin, who expanded Bookslut into a full-fledged webzine with 40 contributors, says she's not even sure what all the fuss is about. She describes the litblogs as a kind of parasite, feeding off the mainstream media. "They aren't generally about content—they just link to it. So if something is dominating the print book reviews, that's what the blogs have to work with." This creates the danger of a catch-22 scenario: Newspapers attribute decreasing book sections to shrinking ad sales. And if publishers begin to funnel more of their marketing budget toward the Internet, print media coverage could decline further, leaving the bloggers with even fewer book reviews to comment on.

An editor at feed.com back in the Internet boom days of the '90s, Lipsyte believes the new wave has a very different agenda from the Web pioneers who founded content-heavy sites like Feed and Suck. "These bloggers are not so evangelistic about the medium," he says. "For them, it's not about using technology to create a new world. It's about creating a space that isn't available elsewhere to talk about the thing they care about—which happens to be books."

We read the best of the litblogs for the way they sift through the media ether, make interesting juxtapositions, provoke intelligent conversation, and connect lesser-known writers with an eager audience. In an era when books have been pushed to the margins of the cultural conversation, maybe that's more than enough...

Friday, June 22, 2007

Andrew Keen - The Cult of the Amateur

If you are at all interested in the impact of the internet, which this author calls Web 2.0 (explained in the book), on print publishing, the movie business, and the music business, then you need to read this book.

We can only hope that the author is overstating the case that Web 2.0 with YouTube, file sharing, and music downloading is killing the above industries. I don't know enough to know if he's right or not.

But I do think he paints a scary picture. If this is the future, then take me back to the past.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Very interesting read... This book has a unique structure. It is a series of letters Charlie writes, revealing his thoughts and experiences during freshman year of high school. We don't know, though, to whom he is writing or why; even they don't know each other. But after Charlie's friend, Michael, dies, he hears a classmate talking about this person and decides to begin these letters, calling him/her "friend."... The book is descriptive about what it's like to grow up and find yourself: friends, parties, family, etc. Typical teenager stuff... But behind this, I think there are questions and issues that confront everyone, perhaps most importantly - Is it better to be passive, quiet, understanding (a wallflower) or passionate, honest, self-assertive? Through his experiences, often troubling, Charlie finds his answer to this question...

The novel dragged for me during the letters where Charlie is more introspective. It moves along smoothly when Charlie is with friends or family and things are happening... Also, I didn't have the same sort of childhood as Charlie, so it was often hard to relate, but I think the questions and issues the novel raises are universal. For example, to connect Fred's earlier discussion about Frost in an earlier post, the choices Charlie makes seem like guesses and trying to simply do his best at the time. Like when he is dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, he is compelled to kiss Sam, not his girlfriend Mary Elizabeth. These choices drastically affect what happens to him next.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It was quick and easy to get through. I thank Kristin Saxon for recommending it.

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Paul Hemphill - The Good Old Boys

The first time I remember hearing the term "good old boy" was 1976/1977 when Jimmy Carter was running for and was elected President. Jimmy was NOT a good old boy, but brother Billy was, and everybody was talking to and about Billy and his gas station in Plains, Georgia.


It was during this time that I first read Birmingham native Paul Hemphill's collection of essays about the South called The Good Old Boys. I enjoyed it immensely because I grew up in the rural South and I understood everything Hemphill says in the book.


I just reread the book, having purchased a copy 10/2/05 at the Gnu's Room bookstore in Auburn, Alabama. I have enjoyed it all over again.


What has happened to the good old boy? Is he still around?


Sure he's still around; it's just that he is not as sharply defined as he once was.

Molly Ivins, that liberal elitisit who masqueraded as a good old girl Texan, had a good run with her "Bubba," who bore a strong resemblence to a good old boy.

George W. Bush has his good old boy side. I can't tell if it's real or fake like his religiosity.

In the circles in which I run in Alabama, I don't know any real good old boys. I wish I new at least one. It would help keep me grounded in reality to know at least ONE good old boy.

If Billy Carter were still holding court at his gas station in Plains, I'd make a beeline over there. Now there was the quintessential Good Old Boy.