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''The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture'' (ISBN 0385520808) is a 2007 book written by entrepreneur and Internet critic Andrew Keen. Published by Currency, Keen's first book is a critique of the enthusiasm surrounding user generated content, peer production, and other Web 2.0-related phenomena. The book was based in part on a controversial essay Keen wrote for ''The Weekly Standard'', criticizing Web 2.0 for being similar to Marxism, for destroying professionalism and for making it impossible to find high quality material amidst all of the user-generated web content.〔〔 〕 ==Contents== Keen argues against the idea of a read-write culture in media, stating that "most of the content being shared— no matter how many times it has been linked, cross-linked, annotated, and copied— was composed or written by someone from the sweat of their creative brow and the disciplined use of their talent." As such, he contrasts companies such as Time Warner and Disney that "create and produce movies, music, magazines, and television" with companies such as Google. He calls the latter "a parasite" since "it creates no content of its own" and "()n terms of value creation, there is nothing there apart from its links."〔 He elaborates on the point by saying, "Of course, every free listing on Craigslist means one less paid listing in a local newspaper. Every visit to Wikipedia's free information hive means one less customer for a professionally researched and edited encyclopedia such as ''Britannica''." Thus, he concludes that "what is free is actually costing us a fortune." He also refers to changes such as downsizing of newspaper business and the closing of record labels as forms of economic loss caused by internet-based social changes.〔 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. Keen quotes social philosopher Jürgen Habermas about the internet and related technologies: "The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralized access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus." Keen states that most of modern social culture has existed with specific gatekeepers analyzing and regulating information as it reaches the masses. He views this expert-based filtering process as beneficial, improving the quality of popular discourse, and argues that it is being circumvented.〔 He also criticizes the ability of the Internet to promote social harms such as gambling and pornography.〔 He writes, "It’s hardly surprising that the increasingly tasteless nature of such self-advertisements have resulted in social networking sites becoming infested with anonymous sexual predators and pedophiles." He sees "cultural standards and moral values" as "at stake" due to new media innovations.〔 More broadly, Keen remarks that "history has proven that the crowd is not often very wise" and argues against the notion that mass participation in ideas improve their quality. He highlights that popular opinion has supported "slavery, infanticide, George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Britney Spears” among other things. He warns against a future of "when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Cult of the Amateur」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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