The Cult of the Amateur

It was good for the first couple of chapters. I agree that the Internet tends to glorify the participation of the masses, even if those masses produce very little quality. Keen criticizes Wikipedia in particular, which has made me second-guess my own dependence on that site. I've never used Wikipedia for any in-depth research, but I now worry that even the small factoids that I get from it may not be true. I think that we are starting to forget the distinction between content created by experts and by amateurs, and this book does a good job reminding us of that.

In the second half, I think the book loses track of its main argument and devolves into moralizing. It basically boils down to: “The Internet is bad because people get addicted to online poker! And people steal music! And there's too much porn!” These latter chapters seem disconnected from the original thesis of the book, since these problems aren't related to the creation of content by amateurs. While the first part of the book is about the objective quality of content, the second half deals with subjective morals, and it becomes too grounded in the personal values of the author.

Perhaps ironically, the very act of my writing this review (I'm not a professional writer or reviewer) is exactly the kind of thing that this book is arguing against. So I wonder, can anyone really write a review of this book without having an inherent bias?