The Great Seduction

1.) Keen describes democratized media as the amateur's ability to now control information, knowledge, content, audience,  etc on the Internet by using pseudonyms or remaining completely anonymous. Keens characterizes media democratization as "undermining truth, sourcing civil discourse, and belittling expertise, experience, and talent." He also believes that it is threatening the future of our cultural institutions. He calls this "Web 2.0 revolution" a "great seduction" because it has promised bringing more truth to more people--more depth of information, more global perspective, more unbiased opinion from dispassionate observers, etc. However, Keen believes that what the web 2.0 revolution really delivers is "superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis and shrill opinion rather than considered judgement. Thus, the sources from which we obtain our information are places on the Internet where millions of bloggers talk solely about themselves and their own take on issues. Examples of what Keen is talking about are sites such as Wikipedia, which enables users to post "facts" about a certain topic, even though Wikipedia has no way of knowing if it is true or not. Youtube videos also exist in which people (some celebrities, some nobodies) can post their own thoughts on various ideas. People watch them and are entertained by them, even though they're not grounded in any truth.

2.) Andrew Keen is very much opposed to social media and the idea of "Web 2.0," calling web media a way of falsifying information we obtain and therefore diminishing our culture. It is obvious in Keen's book excerpt as well as the video clips we watched of him that he is very passionate about how bad social media is for our culture and our generation in particular who does rely so heavily on user generated content on the web such as wikipedia, youtube, various blogs, etc. Douglas Rushkoff, however, has quite a different view of social media than Keen does. Rushkoff adopts a more genuiely curious attitude towards new forms of media and focuses on its positive attributes, viewing it as a way to expand our horizons and ways of communicating and obtaining information if used correctly and for the right purposes. Rushkoff explores more extreme forms of new media, such as Second Life and the U.S. army video game simulation recruitment centers. Because of his investigation of such extremities, I found it easier to disagree with him than with Keen. Because Rushkoff was so optimistic in his portrayal of various mediums of social media, it made me think that everything he said about social media was a bit unrealistic. However, upon watching and reading Keen, I feel like his beliefs may be too harsh with regard to social media, and found myself wanting to argue with him. I think this may have a lot to do with the fact that Keen, in his writing and in the videos, came off as more arrogant and pompous. However, I do maintain the beliefs that I expressed in my paper in response to "Digital Nation"--that I think that new forms of media are frightening and detract from interpersonal communication.