大象传媒

Your email inviting amateur comment says it all, and with zero payment at that, ao I've kept this short..
Cheers,
Iain

I agree with his sentiments. However, that's only my opinion.

I just need to say that my wife and I have tried all the chat sites and quickly came to the opinion that most were inhabited by teenagers or younger but the tragedy is that they all appeared to have had no education.

I don't see it quite so pessimistically. In the future, great cultural works, will be acknowledged as such on their own merits rather than by successful marketing.

In the 'old media' world, it was easy for mediocre material produced by overpaid celebrities to be heavily promoted by the 'mainstream' recording industry and movie studios. Not to say all mainstream material is bad, but there is plenty that is.

And whenever was the 'old media' news unbiased. (Newsnight excepted of course!)

It's hard to tell from the extracts whether Andrew is more worried about the quality of 'new' content or the threat to restricted access that [he and the rest of] the chattering classes maintained as an exclusive privilege.

Yes, there is plenty of trash out there, but there was plenty of it before in mainstream media. I'd be willing to bet the proportions are roughly the same now as before the democratisation of hyperspace.

Maybe the cultural elitist meejah should revise it's role and become a filter of legitimate public and expert opinion instead of on-screen or in-print dinner table bores (with some notable exceptions, of course).

He complains that blogs are 鈥渃ollectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture鈥�.

Erm, surely Blogs *are* the popular opinion.

Evolvution is a good thing.

What a load of arrogant rubbish.

Pretty much was said at the same time the printing press was invented. They were wrong then and Andrew Keen is just as wrong now.

Empire building comes to mind.

Andrew Keen is the "poor fool" who has completely missed the true significance of the web.
Never in our civilisation's history have we been able to communicate directly with each other, without political, religious or corporate bias influencing the message.
This new found ability will hopefully see an acceleration in our evolution as a species as we begin to understand each other better in our direct conversations.
It is early days and we are currently experiencing the inhibitions and restrictions of millennia being thrown off with this new found freedom.
Once this new freedom has had a chance to influence our process of maturing maybe we will see a society that can benefit from the input of all, and not the traditional bias and vested interest of the few.
After all, is it not the academics of the past and present who are responsible for civilisations present plight - and a continued belief in their own self obssessed views that is taking us absolutely nowhere, and rather worsening the situation?
A little more compassion and a little less arrogance would make a more useful contribution to the present uncertain climate in my opinion.

鈥渟ay goodbye to experts and cultural gatekeepers 鈥� our reporters, news anchors, editors, music companies, and Hollywood movie studios.鈥�

good riddance I say! if peoople want a pretentious idiot's opinion to inform their cultural enlightenment, then they can go and buy a broadsheet. I'm much happier to find out what real people think.

people who understand the nature of blogs, enjoy watching mindless drivel on you-tube, and the ease with which you can look up anything on wikipedia are the future I'm afraid.

who needs hollywood movie studios and record companies when all they churn out is bilge? look at the way in which the quality of chart music has improved now that downloads count. manufactured bands and blockbuster films rip people off and feed a culture of greed.

editors and news 'reporters' don't like it because now everyone has the power to offer their view of what's going on. does Keen really think that what we are being offered by news corporations is some kind of pure truth - if so, he is even more deranged than the bloggers he looks down his nose at!

I'm surprised he didn't mention 'Snakes on a Plane'. Hollywood listens to the web and we end up with something that's not so good.

On the other hand I wonder if his wailing could be seen as a piece in the broadsheets complaining about the tabloids. I can imagine broadsheet journalists complaining that the tabloids were employing journalists that hadn't been to Oxbridge.

Will his book be available online???

There may be some truth in what he says but its all very narrow-minded it think...but what about professionals who also fail to use "deep analysis" or "considered judgement".

For example, most professional journalists and advertisers consistently distort truths to make profit, there profit making them professionals, not the quality of their work. If you tube is rubbish so is most of terrestrial TV and virtually all of cable and satellite TV.

Also why should the media be dominated by a small section of society namely professionals? Why should Oxbridge and universities only have the chance to write encyclopaedias and dictionaries?

Wikipedia is the best thing on the web. Rather than being fed ideas from above, we get the chance to get involved. This is the most democratically participant form of society, far more exciting than consuming traditional television and newspapers!

Ravi

I think readers of BLOGs are discriminating of what they read, as are readers of newspapers and lookers/listeners of TV or Radio newscasts. The behavior of peoples' perceived irrationality, as seen or heard by others is just a behavior mode, mostly not serious but irritating at times.

So Andrew Keen thinks reporters, news anchors, editors, music companies, and Hollywood movie studios are "experts and cultural gatekeepers". Never have I heard such a load of rubbish.

Music companies have done a wonderful job of forcing recording artists to live in a form of slavery, whilst producing the mass market crap that record company bosses think the public wants. Billy Ray Cyrus? Puuurlease!

Hollywood has done an even better job of churning out one mindless film after another. Whether its Oceans 27, or the latest Chuck Norris flick.

Finally, the news media, worst of all, because they are the ones who are supposed to deal in reality, yet seem unable to tell the truth about the world we live in. Just watch CNN or Fox news for a few moments if you want the proof in this.

Is Mr Keen scared that the internet wil open up new worlds of talent both in movies and music? Is he afraid that allowing 'normal' people to make the news will somehow threaten the fabric of lies and assumptions that they ask us to swallow every night?

Or does he just lack the necessary taste and intelligence to see Hollywood, the music Biz and the corporate media machine for the sanitised, deintellectualised, mindless tripe they are?

If Mr Keen feel more comfortable listening to these "cultural gatekeepers and experts" then he is welcome to continue obtaining information and entertainment this way. The rest of us are intellgent and independent minded enough to act as our own cultural gatekeepers.

although most of us live in a democratic society it has not been easy to make one's voice heard, a letter to the newspaper being most people's only recourse, leaving aside such in-your-face methods as a placard or a soapbox - so now we have blogging, the perfect forum for giving people a voice.
Take it for what it is - just people having their say, no one ever said it was the truth, besides is it any less truthful than what one reads in the paper?
And let's not forget, the great public choose to make their own mind up anyway, for example opinion polls continue to show the majority of people don't believe that Diana's death was an accident, despite what they are told on the TV or read in the papers.

Let's hope Newsnight has not missed the obvious irony in their last paragraph before the extracts (beginning "What do you think?"). Now we know whose side Newsnight is really on! Yahay Newsnight! Go with the people! Oh wait, maybe they are being ironical on purpose?

There are two ways of interpreting Keen's remarks. (1) People are generally stupid and ill-informed, so we need to shut them up and only listen to "trusted experts". (2) There is a problem with the new internet publishing technology, or at least with its implementation, and we need to re-think. If Keen had something intelligent to say about (2), he might be worth listening to. Sadly, it seems as if Keen's rant is confined to a long-winded and pompous articulation of (1). This marks him off as someone who is himself rather amateurish at what he does - has he nothing intelligent to say?

Where there is change there will always be opposition.

"The Luddites were a social movement of English textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested 鈥� often by destroying textile machines 鈥� against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt threatened their livelihood".. from Wikipedia so might not be true, mind you how do I, or you know what true?

I read blogs, laugh at the stupid videos on youTube and consult Wikipedia.

But when a big news story in breaking I go to the 大象传媒 news website. And buy a heavyweight newspaper to get their spin on the story.

I have a huge collections of DVDs, CDs and books that I have paid good hard cash for. And that I still add to.

Its not Web 2.0 or traditional media. You can mix and match. But, as always, you get what you pay for.

When identity begins to steal away,
And the web ensnares your solitary thought,
Extinguish that blank gaze, reclaim the day,
Lest it render human codes all for naught.
There is no engine that will seek your dream,
No string can bind you to your lover鈥檚 heart,
Blameless as the first illicit byte may seem,
Who e鈥檈r found paradise whilst being apart?
The eyes that see your eyes are those that see
The current surge and flow as we connect -
Heed this error message, access random memory,
Consider which data you most need to protect.
He who toils unceasing, all relentlessly alone,
May come to find those who once waited, gone

The problem here is with Mr Keen holding the view that only expert opinions matter. Whilst they may be more informed, that does not necessarily mean they are right.

The same is with Art, what the snobbish have long criticised as no good, has been reveered by many, Jack Vettriano is one of the best selling artists, but the establishment rejects his work.

we all make our own choices, and what Web 2.0 is doing is broadening our options, and so expanding our tastes. The web presents an unprecendented opportunity to cross cultural divides, it allows us to ask the questions we daren't ask for fear of upsetting politically correct sensibilities, what you could say is that it is turning us all into micro experts.

People have a wealth of info at their fingertips, and so their research on individual topics and issues is second to none. Whatever question I ask in gogle is responded to with a hundred different opinions, and allows me the opportunity to come to my own conclusions

Pompous!

To state that the dissemanation of information in the world was anymore truthful in the past than it is at the present strikes me as naive at best and dishonest at worst. Andrew Keen seems to postulate that the professional media institutions are somehow losing a much regretted expertise and integrity because of a proliferation of bloggers on the Internet. He seems to ignore the fact that some of these bloggers are as competent as any professional and that a portion of their initiatives illustrates fully his wish for technology to be used 'in a way that encourages innovation, open communication, and progress, while simultaneously preserving professional standards of truth, decency, and creativity.'
At any rate if the cultural vacum he so describes is indeed being created, isn't it up to the 'professionals' to adapt and ensure that their craft distinguishes itself from the untruthful and talentless hacks Andrew Keen deplores. The market for professionalism and judicious and truthful journalism remains as srong as ever.
The 大象传媒 (and Newsnight in particular) has blogs, do they make the institution and the professionalism of its staff any less competent?
Evidently, much depends of the quality of content of the blogs in question. One can pick and chose and make an informed judgement of what is being conveyed. Something akin to the difference of journalism between Tabloids and more intellectual publications. I find Andrew Keen's conclusions somewhat offensive in the light of the good points the Internet has yet to offer. The idea that things are being sullied by the intrusions of the talentless masses versus an oligarchic team of experts is far more dangerous than anything he denounces. They are gems and rubbish alike on the net. Keen speaks of artistic endeavours such as film and music, the band The Arctic Monkeys for instance came to prominence precisely through the means he is denouncing. On a purely subjective note, I find their music far more compelling and representative of the world than anything offered by the likes of programs such as the X factor and other so-called professional institutions.

I find it funny that a person should write a book based upon some sweeping generalisations. Suggesting that every person who uses the internet either uses chat Rooms, or writes Bloggs is silly. I do neither.Most people are able to form there own opions about the quality and accuraturacy of News.
The impression I get is that most people who use chat rooms are children or people who are bored and students. Do we want to copy the chineese and allow the government to filter what we can do and say?
We all know that the only place to gain an accurate account of the news is the 大象传媒, perhaps the Author of the book should be educated.

Matt

One is left asking the age old question 'what's the difference between a duck' and the obvious answer is 'one of it's legs are both the same'.

Personally, I find those extracts pretty unreadable. But if you're asking whether kids can tell the difference between credible news sources and the amateur's blog - well, experience will teach them eventually, and their underatanding of the media as a whole will be the better for it.

There is ALWAYS a lot of dross about, but as history shows us that the dross is generally forgotten, I'm pretty confident that the "problems" of 2.0 will resolve themselves quite naturally as audiences become more sophisticated.

I could only manage about the first paragraph before I choked on the words, but found the democratic selection of comments much more interesting and readable. Stuart Sutherland is right on the money when he says that much the same thing was said about the printing press. Democratisation and a plurality of views are a good thing, and he underestimates other people's ability (clearly he thinks he can) to tell the difference between opinionated rubbish and informed debate. Lots of people read the Sun, but that doesn't mean they entirely trust what it says.

And what of today's media? The sound-bite culture? Didn't Tony Blair put something on YouTube because he could use it to put his entire message across without it being edited down by some Rupert Murdoch lackey?

And while methinks the 大象传媒 (and other media companies) very much do care what the audience thinks, it is certainly a moot point whether this discussion matters at all. Web 2.0 maybe hyped out beyond the solar system, but it's happening any way, and there's nowt Andrew Keen or anyone else can do to stop it, so we'd all better get used to it.

This is complete arrogance.

As with most of what you might overhear in a pub or on a bus most blogs are complete rubbish. But that doesn't mean that people are not entitled to express their opinion - no one forces us to listen.

Until recently newspapers and televison/radio have been the only way to communicate widely and the costs involved mean that what we have learn't has been decided by a relatively small group of publishers/broadcasters. Now the internet means that anyone (in the developed world at least) can pass on their thoughts and views. Of course 99.9% of this is rubbish, but the point is that it changes the rules - no longer can the collective media decide what we should or shouldn't know.

The challenge for the media is to persuade people to watch/listen/read amoungst all this background noise. They can do this through the quality and authority of their content. Unfortunately there are too many cases where the media seems to just be the mouthpiece of government or corporate PR departments.

Mr Keen is clearly a half-is-glass-empty kinda guy! Yes there's ill-informed ranting out there, but that's just a byproduct of a much greater benefit, whereby millions of people can now instantly stay informed and make their opinions felt. As for his comments on YouTube and the demise of 'cultural gatekeepers', these suggest to me a humourless elitist!

Intelligent people interpret and incorporate the information they obtain dependent on various factors, such as received source, trustworthiness etc. An elite few shouldn't control what we do or don't 'know', and the circumvention of this elite 'intelligentsia' would appear to be what Mr. Keen is most afraid of. He also seems highly concerned about the economic effects of such moves, but from where I stand, any change in societal (or more pertinently governmental) focus on Economic systems is welcome - the present economic systems haven't done us proud really, have they? (And when I say 'us', I mean the world...)

Andrew Keen is absolutely correct, the internet has allowed the feeble minded extroverts to express their ill founded thoughts and accusations without
any form of accountability.
The sadness of it all is that there is a multitude of shallow thinkers who revel in their mindless diatribes.

It is surely self evident by now that "more does not mean better". You only have to look at the proliferation of television channels to see that 99% of them produce a diet of dumbed down nausea. But this is the result of democratisation. This is the result of anti-elitism. If we want creative geniuses who can wow the world with their talent, then we have to accept that there is an elite. But this is the antithesis of full democracy. Every society needs an elite. I am an elitist - the question is - are you?
Just one last thought though - isn't this an online blog????

It's irrelevant, progress is progress, in whatever guise. A piano, a computer, the internet etc. Web 2.0 is progress and despite it's pluses and minuses it will be used my many for both good and bad. It's up to the taste and quality of the user to determine what is good and worth using and what is bad and worth dismissing. In the same way as it has always been. Only now it may be easier to access everything...

Anyone who thinks that You Tube is a threat to the Royal Shakespeare Company has been smoking too much weed as a teenager and is now seriously paranoid.

And when the so-called professional political commentators are as biased and poorly informed as the 大象传媒 news department, then hooray for political blogs.

Whats the use of spending years gaining knowledge and experience, working for a university or college degree if the world is to inundated by ignorance and self aclaim.

Let the bloggers go to college before you read them.

Why didn't you put "Guardians of Power" by D Edwards and D Cromwell on your reading list instead? Not controversial enough?

I agree with Andrew Keen. We should admire those with special talents and accept that we don't all have them. The web gives us all the freedom to have a go - in music, writing, performance - in an environment free of quality control. The resultant flood of mediocrity just contributes to a world of lowest common denominator everything.
Words are cheap and the endless capacity of the web encourages an unstoppable flow, making it harder to find the wheat in so much chaff. I give you Robert Benchley US actor, author, & humorist (1889 - 1945)"Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing." I can't help wishing that more would heed his words.

i have to smile at this man. he is in the media and he can say other people lie and are fools hahahahaha what a clown, that's all you media people do lie distort and sensationalise, and even if it is all crap on the internet its still free speech,

High quality vursus low quality, what's new? thats why some of us watch Newsnight and others read the Sun, or (God Forbid) watch News 24. Each to their own (God help those watching News 24 though.)

"Let the bloggers go to college before you read them."

The most elitist, ignorant, misinformed and twisted people I have ever met, I met at college...

...and that was just the tutors, you wouldn't be one would you?

I wouldn't be too worried about the poor lambs being led astray by the nasty bloggers. According to WPP's research (that's proper research, not a dodgy social polling web site) bloggers are less trusted than sportsmen, journalists, government organisations and celebrities. In fact the only group in the survey less trusted than bloggers were politicians.

Which suggests that all those people aren't getting into blogs and wikis because they're looking for some kind of objective truth.

And maybe it is equally naive to think we all used to consume newspapers for the truth or "culture" to somehow better ourselves.

America's culture the "envy of the world"?

LOL.

I thought this was a serious book!

Andrew Keen should be careful of what he wants, lest he gets it.

Several countries I can think of already exercise thrillingly bracingly firm control over their citizens' ability to expose themselves to the online perils of which he writes.

The controlling authorities aren't exactly staffed by high-minded seekers after truth or defenders of the right to self-expression, though.

Got to go now - but please call me when it's time to gather round for a spot of chanting. You know: "On paper, good. On-line bad. On paper good. on-line bad."

>> Let the bloggers go to college before you read them. <<

If you went back in to five or six hundred years you would have heard a similar sentiment expressed. Only this time it would have been "let all the writers learn Latin before than can be published!.

How many writers speak Latin these days.

It doesn't take a collage degree to have an opinion or to be able to express it. Education is no guarantee of getting the facts right either, not in a million years.

Can it be that his book is the off-line version of the online product that he is complaining about?
There will always be those who can discriminate and those who can't.

Of course the Internet is full of inanity. However, that has always been true of 鈥榦ld media鈥� too. In consuming the more established media, many of us have learned how to filter the important, insightful and intelligent from the inane. The fact that 鈥榦ld media鈥� goes through a process of mediation 鈥� competing for scarce space and being edited for consumption 鈥� does not, unfortunately, spare it of inanity. There are many authors and newspaper columnists whose insights I do not care for, and many programmes that I refuse to listen to or watch because they are poor. We filter for 鈥榥ew media鈥� just as we do for the old.

Some of the best content on the Internet challenges that produced by those whose pedestal is built on a having a privileged voice in scarce and exalted 鈥榦ld鈥� media. It is in their interest to defend their position by ignoring the good, and pointing to the vast majority of the poor.

I suspect every new media advance since the advent of the printing press has met with opposition. I don鈥檛 suppose the literate enjoyed the prospect of illiterate masses being educated. I recall hearing that when Parliament was debating whether to allow commercial television in the UK, one Lord said that he wanted a nation of boring television, and the only way to ensure that was to leave it in the hands of the 大象传媒.

You may be interested in Professor Numberg's commentary on the topic of Wikipedia as aired today on National Public Radio's Fresh Air program here in the US.

Sounds like the death throws of a lumbering, soon to expire dinosaur to me. The mainstream media have lost. They let us all down by allowing themselves to be hijacked by elitist establishment and corporate interests. You've told us lies and deceived us for too long and we've had enough. Thankfully the internet has exposed you for what you are - the mouth piece and cheerleader for the rich and the powerful. We now have the tools to make our own minds up about the issues of the world without needing your version of what to think. Time leave, your time is up.

The people are only stupid because they watched too many shows like newsnight!

After a while on youtube, theyll be shouting, "How could i have being soooo stupid???"

The "threat of democracy" is looming large!

And sooooo, the end is near, Now i fac.................

Bye Newsnight:-)

Not only pompous but an arrogant moralist.

We are now enjoying a communications revolution that puts the Western invention of printing in the shade. So long as we keep fighting Govt's needs to control it.

The idea that there is one authentic cultural/critical voice is palpable nonsense. If Andrew Keen is correct then who is consuming this deluge of "uninformed political commentary, to unseemly home videos, to embarrassingly amateurish music, to unreadable poems, reviews, essays, and novels" and why? Clearly, the audience are getting something they value from the content otherwise they wouldn't bother with it.

Most research appears to indicate that people who read blogs, particularly current affairs & political ones, seek more sources of information than consumers of "traditional" media. Through the internet, I've been delighted to find ideas and opinions that are normally dismissed out of hand if acknowledged at all. There never has been a purely objective, independent media. Generally, the blogosphere rarely tries to claim that it is.

I'm trying to recall when I was ever aware of the "rich ecosystem of writers, editors, agents, talent scouts, journalists, publishers, musicians, reporters, and actors." Nope, can't.

If you want to know what colours Andrew Keen's view of the Internet, and especially Wikipedia, have a look at

Mr Keen is clearly the consummate "amateur", and a self-publicist to boot!

It's quite true that the web gives amateurs a chance...

On the other hand, where it concerns the admittedly few and perhaps impossible arcane fields of knowledge in which I can claim some expertise, nearly everything I have ever read from the hands of professional journalists, was at best very much oversimplified and at worst total nonsense.

Because, let us admit it, the "ancien media" reserved public communication for people who may have been professional communicators, but usually non-experts --- amateurs --- in the field they were reporting in.

So I fail to see why giving amateurs a chance would be a change for the worse, indeed, would be much of a change at all. And meanwhile, the web also gives the experts an opportunity to express their opinion.

A fine attempt at generalising the Internet and its participants. But also a failed one. Intelligent people will be drawn to intelligent content, and inane people to inanity. But even that is not fixed; there is scope for both evolution and devolution. As in most walks of life there is far more chaff than wheat, but the separation of the two is a learned discipline and its benefits speak for themselves. Everyone has their own tolerance limit for empty-headedness, just as it is possible to get all too serious about 'things'. But sooner or later the chaff-lovers acquire a taste for wheat, and rarely look back.

What impresses me most is that there is a hunger for detail and investigation in relation to mainstream newsFEEDS, which often settle for so little in the way of content and tenacity. The freedom of communication the Internet provides is becoming ever more tentative, and is threatened on several fronts. Keen's opinions will offer nothing in its defence and will only bolster those who would dare to suggest that such scope for communication, however amateur or sharp, is not for the peasants, but only for the 'elite'. Whatever its failings the Net keeps folk thinking instead of sleeping. If you need a sleep, though, watch the TV.

Jan McManus wrote:

"He complains that blogs are 鈥渃ollectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture鈥�.

Erm, surely Blogs *are* the popular opinion."

Excellent point.

Another good point made was that the old media is also notoriously biased so all we get to see by reading more blogs is how many biases there are surely? The indterminacy of natural language is a function of its intensionality (with an s) which means that we often just accept what we read because of the way it is writtem. The blogs should, in theory, make it easier for us to resist being easily led by those who own/control the old media.

There's no conspiracy there, it's just that the old media isn't as evidence driven and accurate when 'reporting' as it likes to make out, as even in science, theory is in fact logically underdetermined by evidence, meaning that there are alternative ways of making sense of the same facts.

The more perspectives the better, so long as one iterates towards what's pragmatically most likely to be true in the end.

What *is* disturbing is when some of the old media run blogs (like The Guardian CIF) but pull comments whic they don't like (or which some readers don't like). Now that is Orwellian and it makes a mockery of their raison d'etre, namely "Comment Is Free" as clearly it is not, and freedom of the press requires one to be prepared to speak out, even if it offends!

And of course, the 大象传媒 isn't immune from criticism:

What a load of elitest twoddle! Can't you tell that this individual has a book to peddle. He assumes that the traditional media is in some way reliable and honourable. Experience has proved this view to be rubbish. the vast majority of us that use the internet are as capable of smelling bull shit when we encounter it and Andrew Keen falls into that catagory. i am surprised that he is not also calling for curbs on the print media too.

When CB radios came out they were defined as "a place for people who had nothing to say, to say it." The Internet, with blogs and u-tube is the new CB radio. With that said one might think I agree with the book about "professionals in the news media." What makes one professional? Is it the fact that one is paid? Or is it the fact that one is good at what one does? Who defines good?
I don't read blogs and I take Wikipedia with a grain of salt. I do subscribe to several online newspapers from around the world on both sides of the issues and try to read between the "spin" from the "professionals" who in reporting the news from their own perspective try to sway their readers. One does not have to be very old to have seen a few retractions by the "professionals" to know they don't all do as much research as we are led to believe. Maybe Andrew Keen is worried that the public will learn that it has to think about EVERYTHING it reads and sees rather than following blindly behind the so called professional.

Andrew Keen complains that blogs are 鈥渃ollectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture. Newspapers have been doing this for years!

I take Andrew Keen's point that maybe a lot of people are getting all their 'information' from the web and assuming it must be true because it was on the internets but... haven't people always done that? Relied on unreliable sources? I heard it from a bloke in the pub so it must be true, kinda thing?

Sure there's tons of crap on the interweb. But there's also some stunningly good stuff.

What a load of elitest twoddle! Can't you tell that this individual has a book to peddle. He assumes that the traditional media is in some way reliable and honourable. Experience has proved this view to be rubbish. the vast majority of us that use the internet are as capable of smelling bull shit when we encounter it and Andrew Keen falls into that catagory. i am surprised that he is not also calling for curbs on the print media too.

What a load of elitest twoddle! Can't you tell that this individual has a book to peddle. He assumes that the traditional media is in some way reliable and honourable. Experience has proved this view to be rubbish. the vast majority of us that use the internet are as capable of smelling bull shit when we encounter it and Andrew Keen falls into that catagory. i am surprised that he is not also calling for curbs on the print media too.

What a load of elitest twoddle! Can't you tell that this individual has a book to peddle. He assumes that the traditional media is in some way reliable and honourable. Experience has proved this view to be rubbish. the vast majority of us that use the internet are as capable of smelling bull shit when we encounter it and Andrew Keen falls into that catagory. i am surprised that he is not also calling for curbs on the print media too.

I did have something erudite to say, but at No 75, I don't think anyone will still be listening/watching/reading ....zzzzz

The Web 2.0 media hype needs some good critics - but God help us, on this performance, Andrew Keen isn't one of them.

Humourless, patronizing and supercilious - Keen leaves no choice between his moralizing sermons, where all technology is evil, and mindless technology evangelism, where it's all positive.

Unfortunately the 大象传媒 played right into his hands.

Can't we have better technology, please? Without Keen or the Web 2.0 idiots? Each one is as cynical as the other.

We deserve better please, Newsnight.

What a load of elitest twoddle! Can't you tell that this individual has a book to peddle. He assumes that the traditional media is in some way reliable and honourable. Experience has proved this view to be rubbish. the vast majority of us that use the internet are as capable of smelling bull shit when we encounter it and Andrew Keen falls into that catagory. i am surprised that he is not also calling for curbs on the print media too.

What a load of elitest twoddle! Can't you tell that this individual has a book to peddle. He assumes that the traditional media is in some way reliable and honourable. Experience has proved this view to be rubbish. the vast majority of us that use the internet are as capable of smelling bull shit when we encounter it and Andrew Keen falls into that catagory. i am surprised that he is not also calling for curbs on the print media too.

Andrew Keen is right, the Internet can give some of us a false sense of knowledge.
Try translating with the help of the web...
A cul- de- sac will become "the arse of a bag" and Newsnight "Nouvelles Nuit" (yes).
Je repose ma valise for you linguists out there !
Bonsoir.

The media hype Web 2.0 needs some good critics - but God help us, on this performance, Andrew Keen isn't one of them.

Humourless, patronizing and supercilious - Keen leaves no choice between his moralizing sermons, where all technology is evil, and mindless technology evangelism, where it's all positive.

Unfortunately the 大象传媒 played right into his hands. Can't we have better technology, please? Without Keen or the Web 2.0 idiots?

What a complete prat - and barely literate either: he referred on Newsnight to 'THIS media' - media is plural, keen Andrew.

Perhaps he's bitter about having some drivel edited out of Wikipedia... or maybe he also works for Murdoch (pure objectivity!) or the Publishers' Guild of America or something.

And I guess five hundred years ago he'd have been cheering as translators of the bible were burnt at the stake - obviously common people need a priesthood to explain the world to them.

Wikipedia is fantastic, the 大象传媒 website is fantastic, the Guardian even has some very well-informed bloggers. Various political blogs (Guido in England, for example) provide valuable new channels of information that would previously have been censored by print editors. And being able to search digitally through millions of pages, rather than having to leaf physically through thousands of printed books, marks a fundamental revolution in the use of information.

There's a hierarchy of information on the internet, and you have to learn how to use it - but then you have to learn how to use print media too. The idea that anyone might believe 'everything they read/see on the Net' is utter nonsense, because, unlike state- or Murdoch-controlled media, the Net presents lots of conflicting perspectives and stories, which force people to think critically, perhaps for the first time.

When I want to check what's 'really happening' behind the highly edited newsfeed that I use as my main primary source of information on 'current affairs', I use Google and a certain amount of critical intelligence to find elements of the Truth that are filtered out by the slow, selective and conservative channels that were just about all that was available to 'ordinary people' until 10 years ago.

This guy himself resembles the kind of half-baked blogger that I'd skip on from after a few seconds on a Google trawl for real information and serious comment.

The phenomenon of gullible people taking something more seriously than is objectively warranted because it is written down is far from new and unique to today's Internet. One of the earliest and most widely circulated traditionally published books was the bible and no-one today who would claim to be primarily rational (please note the proviso before disagreeing) today regards this as an accurate record of (at least) the history or science it purports to convey though through the ages many people took it all unquestioningly as (I don't know if Gavin Essler was being deliberately ironic) "god given". In my view it is in many ways good that publishing is no longer confined to the "professional", who may be learned and accurate, or may be politically or religiously motivated and misleading, and beguilingly authoritative. Although it is debatable how education standards have changed, it appears to me that larger numbers of people are learning to be more critical of all sources of information and that is a good thing. No system has ever prevented misinformation, only skewed the predominant type or source(s) of misinformation. Peer-reviewed wikipedia articles are, I find, more reliable than e.g. newspapers (both tabloid and broadsheet). Personally, I agree that much of the rubbish on the internet is unnecessary and its publication has negative effects. Unfortunately, I have not (yet) been appointed sole arbiter of what is accurate useful and permissible and until that time I guess I'd rather live with multiple viewpoints, from careful filtering of which one might discern something of value. As far as a brief review of this hard copy, professionally published, book under discussion goes, it appears to say little more than "there's a lot of rot on the internet and it's sad that some people believe it". Bet you could learn more you didn't know by browsing wikipedia than reading the book!

Can I just point out that, having lambasted Wikipedia for having the wrong pictures of Brown and Milburn (is that really the best you could do?) it is more than slightly ironic to find that Newsnight used a picture of Lembit Opik MP for Gareth Thomas MP, the DfID Minister, in tonight's vulture funds item, oh, 20 minutes before talking about how all of us open-source interactive users are so damn ignorant - and on the SAME NIGHT that they had the ACTUAL Gareth Thomas on as well - how many editorial nets did that slip through?

Darwinism 2.0

Andrew Keen is both right and wrong. If anyone thinks that there was a golden age where journalists, editors and proprietors of media were paragons of virtue they should get themselves a copy of Noam Chomskys Manufacturing Consent, in the words of Citizen Kane himself "You provide the pictures, I'll provide the war.". There is one notable exception, peer reviewed work, whether Brittanica, Nature magazine or The Lancet, this is because of the high barriers that must be crossed and the cost of error. He is right in that people should be more skeptical, whether it's a badger as MP on Wikipedia or the 大象传媒s famous reporting of an uprising in Basra during the invasion of Iraq, while Al Jazeera, who were actually in Basra showed there was no uprising. The first casualty of war is truth, and we are in a war, a war not of Civilisation but of Reality, those that have the intelligence to better discern reality will do better than those that fall for Badgers and Basra uprisings, those that are in Darwins terms "unfit" will perish and those that are "fit" will survive, welcome to Darwinism 2.0.

Darwinism 2.0

Andrew Keen is both right and wrong. If anyone thinks that there was a golden age where journalists, editors and proprietors of media were paragons of virtue they should get themselves a copy of Noam Chomskys Manufacturing Consent, in the words of Citizen Kane himself "You provide the pictures, I'll provide the war.". There is one notable exception, peer reviewed work, whether Brittanica, Nature magazine or The Lancet, this is because of the high barriers that must be crossed and the cost of error. He is right in that people should be more skeptical, whether it's a badger as MP on Wikipedia or the 大象传媒s famous reporting of an uprising in Basra during the invasion of Iraq, while Al Jazeera, who were actually in Basra showed there was no uprising. The first casualty of war is truth, and we are in a war, a war not of Civilisation but of Reality, those that have the intelligence to better discern reality will do better than those that fall for Badgers and Basra uprisings, those that are in Darwins terms "unfit" will perish and those that are "fit" will survive, welcome to Darwinism 2.0.

The phenomenon of gullible people taking something more seriously than is objectively warranted because it is written down is far from new and unique to today's Internet. One of the earliest and most widely circulated traditionally published books was the bible and no-one today who would claim to be primarily rational (please note the proviso before disagreeing) today regards this as an accurate record of (at least) the history or science it purports to convey though through the ages many people took it all unquestioningly as (I don't know if Gavin Essler was being deliberately ironic) "god given". In my view it is in many ways good that publishing is no longer confined to the "professional", who may be learned and accurate, or may be politically or religiously motivated and misleading, and beguilingly authoritative. Although it is debatable how education standards have changed, it appears to me that larger numbers of people are learning to be more critical of all sources of information and that is a good thing. No system has ever prevented misinformation, only skewed the predominant type or source(s) of misinformation. Peer-reviewed wikipedia articles are, I find, more reliable than e.g. newspapers (both tabloid and broadsheet). Personally, I agree that much of the rubbish on the internet is unnecessary and its publication has negative effects. Unfortunately, I have not (yet) been appointed sole arbiter of what is accurate useful and permissible and until that time I guess I'd rather live with multiple viewpoints, from careful filtering of which one might discern something of value. As far as a brief review of this hard copy, professionally published, book under discussion goes, it appears to say little more than "there's a lot of rot on the internet and it's sad that some people believe it". Bet you could learn more you didn't know by browsing wikipedia than reading the book!

The phenomenon of gullible people taking something more seriously than is objectively warranted because it is written down is far from new and unique to today's Internet. One of the earliest and most widely circulated traditionally published books was the bible and no-one today who would claim to be primarily rational (please note the proviso before disagreeing) today regards this as an accurate record of (at least) the history or science it purports to convey though through the ages many people took it all unquestioningly as (I don't know if Gavin Essler was being deliberately ironic) "god given". In my view it is in many ways good that publishing is no longer confined to the "professional", who may be learned and accurate, or may be politically or religiously motivated and misleading, and beguilingly authoritative. Although it is debatable how education standards have changed, it appears to me that larger numbers of people are learning to be more critical of all sources of information and that is a good thing. No system has ever prevented misinformation, only skewed the predominant type or source(s) of misinformation. Peer-reviewed wikipedia articles are, I find, more reliable than e.g. newspapers (both tabloid and broadsheet). Personally, I agree that much of the rubbish on the internet is unnecessary and its publication has negative effects. Unfortunately, I have not (yet) been appointed sole arbiter of what is accurate useful and permissible and until that time I guess I'd rather live with multiple viewpoints, from careful filtering of which one might discern something of value. As far as a brief review of this hard copy, professionally published, book under discussion goes, it appears to say little more than "there's a lot of rot on the internet and it's sad that some people believe it". Bet you could learn more you didn't know by browsing wikipedia than reading the book!

Please can someone tell me who the extremely well informed gentleman guest who was debating the topic of the "cult of the Amatuer" with Mr Keen, was, tonite???

I would be very interested in reading his comments in paid publication or online in future.

I didn't manage to catch it at the end of the programme!

I think most people understand that a blog is like a chance to gossip and share one person's opinion. Ok, Mr Keen might find content purile, so he shouldn't read it! He would probably find the Daily Sport equally tasteless, and he doesn't choose to read that and cry out that this newspaper has a circulation of readers and what the information they read in it might be doing to their minds.

There is a big difference inane blogs and other high cultural information, which can be found for FREE on the internet.

I personally have started reading the entire metaphysical writings of Aristotle, posted on the internet.

Amazing.

Ok, someone with a particular agenda could chose to mispost these writings, but I think I would always be able to cross reference what I learnt.

I thought the guest in the studio defended Wikkipedia very well.

It has always seemed to have a lot of integrity as a sourse of information, to me.

The guest's historical comments regarding the debate surrounding the opening of libraries, and how some people argued against public libraries at this time because the "masses couldn't be trusted with information" is a very interesting point.

I myself, am very scared about the death of libraries, but I think that free access to information on the internet has helped make important information accessible to people who wouldn't otherwise have the resources to find it, too.

The only problem with internet is that it does still discriminate against the poorest as they will not be able to use it as much, not having broadband and instead having to pay as u go for internet cafes, as library access is poor.

I thoght some of Mr Keen's comment's were very alarming.

I personally hate the use of the word "masses".

Does Mr Keen want the "masses" to be burnt on bonfire's like D H Lawrence and his contempories?

Why is Mr Keen so scared of people publishing their own texts or songs?

Yes, newspapers, publishing houses and multi national music companies may lose a little revenue, by cutting out the middle man "professionals" but would that be such a bad thing?

Forgive me if I stick to Aristotle and give Mr Keen's book a miss!

Andrew Keen is absolutely right. There is now an incessant stream of political propaganda, masquerading as information, coming out of the USA and elsewhere. Look behind the blogs and many newspaper articles and you'll find a US right wing so-called think tank. You get to recognise the style after a while but it dupes an awful lot of people, which is the purpose.

I recently came across a country assasination, as opposed to a character assasination, piece that was obviously untrue, to me, in a reputable US newspaper. I traced the author to a know source of disinformation, on behalf of the right, and the source of his quotes to a Neocon funded organisation that specialises in providing distorted translations from the Middle-East.

There is relatively very little information you can take at face-value on the Internet. As Keen says Wikipedia is not immune. Try looking up Israel. You won't find anything of its origins in terrorism. The history of Israel is being rewritten on the Internet. Educated people will even tell you that the UN created Israel in 1948. No so, a UN partition plan was subverted and Israel created in defiance of the UN. About the only place where you can find truths like that is the UN website itself.

What makes the picture even more depressing is the response of so many Newsnight viewers. Unaware fools. We have a serious problem that everyone should be aware of. Our schools should teach not just the likelihood of being subject to propaganda on the Internet but give explicit examples and exercises on how to find and identify relatively reliable sources.

The 大象传媒 is pretty good but not unbiased these days. Main news viewers will have seen a serious strategic issue between the US and Rusiia reduced to to it being a matter of Putin would simply like some respect.

I've mentioned Israel and criticised the 大象传媒. What chance of being published? Go on 大象传媒, impress me.

Keen's comments on Newsnight were rendered laughable by his belief that newspaper are a reliable source of information. As far as I can see, the vast majority of newspapers can only be relied upon to twist the facts to fit their pre-existing view of the world .The Murdoch owned TV news channels seem to work along similar lines too. In short, the demise of old media is largely self-inflicted - they are every bit as unreliable as any internet source.

While DIY information like that found in Wikipedia can be useful in a general context, for it to be used, as it often is, by professional journalists without cross-checking is shabby and irresponsible. I recently saw a report in "The Independent", no less, which stated that gaberdine (technically a type of weave although generally applied to smooth faced cloth) was invented by Thomas Burberry. This is nonsense as Burberry was a tailor who used gaberdine cloth to make raincoats. No big deal but annoying, nonetheless.

It seems that an awful lot of people here are falling into a very basic trap. This arrogant attitude that most posters here have is that their opinion is as valid as professionals is fundamentally skewed. What is you opinion based on? Have you been to Iraq recently and seen for yourself? Information needs to begin somewhere and it needs to begin with the truth, or as close as the truth as possible. There is self opinion of course, but professional information producers like Reuters are there to try and communicate truth!

Do you really want to live in a world without professional reporters, Reuters and other news agencies? Where does the truth begin and the net end? The concern is the net is killing these sources!

Keen鈥檚 major concern is that professional options are being marginalised by a barrage of ill informed rhetoric from whoever fancies a 鈥榬eckon鈥�. Information is a path that leads from one point to another. Your own opinion is created from your personality and the information you get from external sources. As the information you consume becomes less reliable so will your grip on the reality of the world. This is a very real fear and need to be discussed. In wartime information is distorted to indoctrinate an opinion of the world in the consumer. The internet now might make it impossible to hide the truth in wartime, but it also might make it impossible to see the truth!

The professional media groups are going down the plughole due to people now getting information from the web. The decline of professional media outlets like Reuters is a major concern for all of us. Everyone thinks that their opinion is important, but what information is it based on? If the information is flawed and you don鈥檛 know what the truth is, what鈥檚 the point in having an opinion at all?

Ironically the people who are most likely to post here are the very people who are likely to confuse self opinion with professional information. Keen isn鈥檛 saying that the masses can鈥檛 make up their mind, he is saying that in a few years there will be no professional voices, no reference points just a noise of even more ill informed information. And this world will be even easier to manipulate by those in a position of power than before.

Despite all the benefits televised media has over the internet, every once in a while it's nice to hear the opinion of somebody who doesn't live in a mansion.

I welcome the article & debate. Free not freedom. Informed information usually has cost burdens, the cost of books for example for anyone with limited means on an educational course. I am always worried about the lowest common denominator in social interaction - the point as always, is it takes a lot of mental work to work out what the dross is and escape amateurism. Millionaires who left school at 16 with no qualifications will always be cited. People need listening to and their level of criticism, and don't forget serendipity.

The web is just another form of publishing. The invention of the printing press allowed millions to be duped by (for example) Hitler's Mein Kampf, the Czarist secret police forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and the Zinoviev letter (in the Daily Mail). Even today there are countless books being published that claim crystals can heal, wi-fi causes ill-health, and homeopathy works. Any form of publishing will be used by those seeking to exploit the gullible, the stupid and the vulnerable. The challenge, as it always has been, is to critically read and question what is published. Just because it's on parchment, in a book, magazine or newspaper, on a webpage or in a blog doesn't mean it's true...but it doesn鈥檛 mean it isn鈥檛.

Having said that, the existence of the web does mean that the idiots, fools, charlatans, conspiracy theorists and liars find it even easier to disseminate their nonsense. Reader beware.

Whatever has happened practicall experience takes authentic whiles to create...

Everyone knows the economic minded only believe in their values their beliefs... in the kind of lives worlds and futures where they and their kind win...they have ambiguous ideas but small minds that are prejudiced, single minded, greed is good, risk and fear, closed epicurean, and deterred into fighting for the money pies of the pecking orders classes...they fight to win the take and defeat the motivated ....bettering themselves by changing the odds...

But most of humanity are motivated to play for all and any opportunity...as customers and community contributors of popularisable choices...seeking the togetherness of shared company around many topics of common purpose and common expectation but different satisfactions of angle and rewards that only materialise at the end of the work... often via the internet... for great worlds with bizarres of options for communities to discuss and progress forward with different contributions and motivations of investment...

It is Yid net v Yob net...!

Yids are self employed high risk fighters...yobs are socially analogous community players of amour and sympathy...

The tale of two cities... yobs have the nouse to explore all stories with humanity as a support... yids have to limit their economic risk to the perceived wisdom of the creditable...rather than the ever growing knowlage of the companionable...

In a world of shared knowledge...as yobs we have shares in controversy exploration nouse knowing worldliness opportunity power glory whodunnit working things out leadership opportunity proof by domination and our own stories ... yid briefly have shares in earnings and return on investment...the soapfistication of yids fights the explorationary nouse of us yobs... they might win their trivial games of life but us yobs beat them and drive them off our turf to conquer with all the truths and knowing we care about... amenetptra

I might find Keen's argument a lot more persuasive if it was better written.

The concept of Keen's book is bizarre. If the internet was being used to replace peer reviewed medical journals with blogs written by addled drug users with phony PhDs in Shamanism achieved through correspondance courses he might have a point; however, this is clearly not the case. The notion that the professional journalists writing science articles for broadsheet newspapers have an informed oppinion about the latest research in some obscure field of quantum physics, and are thus able to be arbiters of the truth, is completely farcical.

Perhaps professional journalists are better qualified to report information (or misinformation) than the average blogger. However, the point Keen fails to grasp regarding the benefit of the internet as a democratic media outlet is that it allows content to be published that might not have the popular appeal required to be printed in the mainstream media. This distinction leads me to the recognition of a strange paradox in Keen's argument.

Professional media outlets do not answer to the higher powers of truth and art, but rather to their shareholders. The output of most professional media networks is defined by a statistically analysed view of what it is that people want to watch or read. Professional content is defined by the wants of the people Keen sneeringly called "the masses" on Newsnight. How is it that such networks are defending and upholding culture if they are expressly catering to those people Keen dismisses as incapable of critical thought?

The content on the web may not be true or well informed - but then neither is most of what one reads in The News of the World. If you are unsure about the content on a website you are only a couple of clicks away from a second or thousandth opinion from an expert in the field. I hear that lots of bonafide tenured experts and artists have their own websites nowadays. Such a process of review is not possible when reading a newspaper.

Maybe Keen answers these points in his book; but I don't think I will read it in its entirety because he came across as a total arse on the professionaly rendered medium of Newsnight.

Is Mr.Keen on the same planet as the rest of us? I have no brief for the peddlers of ill-informed opinion and factual inaccuracies frequently encountered on the web, but surely he realises that the authors are not challenging but merely mimicking the professionals he seeks to defend.

This, in case he has not noticed, is the age of populist tabloid journalism of the direst kind, of Big Brother and American Idol, a world in which everyone is encouraged by the mainstream media to believe Warhol's "everyone can be famous for 15 minutes" philosophy and most are severely disappointed.

His 'experts' have been accumulating fortunes peddling mediocre crass garbage. He can hardly be surprised if the amateurs follow suit.

As to his problem with Wikkipedia, he is doubtless aware that Britannica, OED and many other erudite sources of legitimate information are also available online. The web is basically no different from a motor car. If you can't drive, you are going to crash. If you know what you are doing, the possibilities are endless.

The amateurs, who are process-oriented usually know more about most things than do the professionals, who are product-oriented.

Those professionals working to objectives can never (by definition thereby) get you beyond the already known. They get obsessed with "relevance" and so with their own cultivated horse-blinkers.

The amateurs are the developers, while the professionals merely stultify.

See how those organisations, always started and developed by amateurs, will get little farther once the professionals take over. They then depend on there monopoly position for staying afloat.

Here in the US, we suffer from the professional media being intentionally transformed into misinformation and tabloid infotainment. We have very few options for getting the facts we need as citizens of a "democracy." This is certainly one reason I get my news from PBS and the 大象传媒.
We also suffer from amateurish entertainment brought to us by cost-cutting media moguls. Those of us who are professionals, I in recording engineering, are left with very few options for a paying career. We have largely been supplanted by amateur "musicians" who wouldn't know a great recording if it bit them on the ass.
Can we expect better from a populace who twice elected an idiot (or did they?), and who think Media Player downloads sound great?
I think not.

What a load of twaddle. First of all, as an ageing engineer I quite often forget things that I learnt at University. As I don鈥檛 carry around a bag of textbooks anymore I look it up on the web! So far I have not found any rubbish in the subjects of interest.

Next, my whole family are avid web users, to the extent that we have 4 PC鈥檚 plus a laptop at home, which are all constantly being used for surfing the web. I would be disappointed if the conventional media and/or governments tried to censor and guide the web content. Fortunately, the web is so large now that even those governments that do try to censor what is uploaded, such as Iran are unable to. So what if people upload information that is rubbish or biased? The newspapers do it all the time and also book authors (not mentioning any names). Can he honestly say that many of the journals published in the world are not 鈥楽tate Controlled鈥� or promoting the interests of their owners? I remember when Video鈥檚 came out, people thought that that was the end of public cinemas. I think we can all have a good laugh at that now.

I don鈥檛 think that the web is a substitute for a paper, magazine or a book. If anything it complements the traditional media. I suggest that the reason for the layoffs he mentions is due to poor editorial content in those journals rather than being supplanted by the web.

Finally, I have just moved to Australia. Through the web, my children have kept their ties with their friends and our family in the UK and also it has given us access to immigrant community support sites that we would probably never have known about. Also it has been invaluable in helping me find a job, along with the ads in the newspapers.

I think Andrew Keen is completely missing the point. It is irrelevant how many people are publishing blogs, video, music. After all, this should be regarded as a good thing, that at least the Internet is acting as the "Hyde Park Corner" of the world. However, the question he should be asking and analysing is why there are so many people visiting such sites. What is it that these web site are providing and the "established" and traditional medium are failing.

Is this the Soviet England where we must watch and listen to the continuous diatribe of pop journalism, cult of celebritism, non-ending and incestuous "reality-tv" because these are produced by large corporates with multimillion dollar budgets?. Why are these of any greater value or merit than shows with lower production quality, produced by "amateurs". Why is journalism or political commentary because its broadcast on the 大象传媒, ITN, broadsheet or tabloid journals any more valuable? They may have access to the decision makers, but this in itself is a weakness. To ensure such access, are we certain that professional journalists have not sacrificed integrity?

In the field of technical journalism, except for peer reviewed journals, the level of knowledge and professionalism exhibited is often much worse than many technical forum sites. As with any source of information, the observer needs to have the ability to sort, cross-correlate and perform significant amounts of data mining to obtain useful information. However, how is the consumer of such "amateur source" any more disconnected from reality than the average reader of the Sun newspaper or viewer of Good Morning Britain?

'Web 2.0' is really just a PR nonsense term for 'lots_more_illiterate/in
numerate_people_using_Windows_on_the Internet' as blogs are really just USENET with lots of colour and pictures which are easier to access for all.

When Windows 95 and the web came along, the groups which comprised
USENET started to degenerate in may user's eyes. That's because
initially USENET was ARPANET which tied together academic and military
researchers, and its userbase was therefore limited to an educated elite both by the expense and the relatively arcane nature of the technology and purposes of the system.

It's true that once it expanded to cover academia and the general public (especially in 1995 when Windows 95 made the web based browsers easier to use) like everything else (satellite TV for example), once you open something up to 'the market' it comes to reflect the interests of the masses not the elite.

To that extent, Keen is right. The mean quality of what you find on the
net has gone down, and given that newspapers and writers cost, it's
inevitable that the web will cull them to some extent. Why pay for
something one doesn't have to, if one gets the news wrong, so what? All most people want is a story (see the Sun, People, News of The World etc) they don't much care if it's a true story, they just want stories, and that's all that natural language is really up to anyway, don't let the old media folk tell you any different either!.

The way that some have combated this inevitably worsening signal to
noise ratio has been to create Special Interest Groups or LISTs which require vetted membership to participate. So, ironically, in the end, the expansion of the net has meant that over time, much that used to be publicly on the web, no longer is, or is, but is restricted access. As others have said, that's 'market forces' or 'social Darwinism' for you.

We can't do much about it, China tries, so do other planned economy
states. In the end, I reckon we will too, just in the interests of government, as anarcho-capitalism, or Trotskyism (which is what all this is at heart) sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Just wait, you'll see ;-)

(We are dumbng ourselves down: see #19, #23 & #24 to see how)

/blogs/newsnight/2007/06/monday_4_june_2007.html

Surely most people are aware that a blog is simply someone's opinion and not gospel truth? Its an on-line discussion.

The internet is a pyramid building from the bottom to the top. It's a long journey but it's a democratic and fascinating one. No longer do people have to be treated like mushrooms in the dark and spoon fed information and stories by the mainstream media. We can make, write and report our own. Like any human phenomenon the good ideas and authors will eventually float to the top.

Mr Keen seems to be worried he will be out of a job, but clearly many people on here think this article is rubbish but have still read it and replied.

Kind of ironic wouldn't you say?

I can't see what all the fuss is about myself as most of us have enough common sense to differentiate between "truth" or nonsense on the internet.

The so called "middle classes" control mainstream media outlets and as such it is only their opinon that has the right to call itself "expert" after we wouldn't want the "common herd" having their say now would we?

More power to the bloggers I say and who exactly decides what the real truth is anyway?

Steve Meese wrote"...we wouldn't want the "common herd" having their say now would we?

More power to the bloggers I say and who exactly decides what the real truth is anyway?"

That's classic anarcho-capitalism/Trotskyism. Many espousing such views would deny that that's what they subscribe to, but that's how invidious it is.

Natural language is not truth-functional. Pursuit of truth is something done by scientists these days. That too is a selective process.

The danger of asking "who exactly decides what the real truth is anyway?" in a sceptical if not nihilistic way, is just symptomatic of the extent to which corrosive nihilism, anarchism and unwitting extreme leftism now blights so much of our lives as 'political correctness' (aka Gramscist cultural Marxism). It's anarcho-cpaitalist foot-soldiers are, paradoxially, our well intentioned females, who as potential mothers, are our great egalitarians, despite what they see with their own lying eyes ;-)

Look at people's height. It's a clue to how people are not equal. Just as treating everyone as if they were the same height would have adverse consequences, so too does assuming people have equal native abilities.

Recognising human diversity will turn out to be far more demanding on our currently taken for granted mores and legislation than most of us presently appreciate!

I agree completely with the extracts.

Wikipedia is flawed.

There are cabals of editors on Wikipedia who work like a teenage gang .

They can make it appear that there is community "consensus" to edit or delete an article there in a certain way. Look at the history of some articles and you can easily find that in abundance.

Or see how the same handful of editors often work together to remove articles one of them does not understand/approve of.

Relatively few people acting in concert can assert themselves on what appears there. No-one with any authority need actually be involved.

There is never any guarantee to any Wikipedia user that the article they find there is actually factually correct nor that it actually reflects the most authoritative views available on the topic in question.

That is what democratization does to knowledge - and that is scary.

Perhaps Citizendium can become a future reliable online encyclopedia - with user generated content but with expert editors to increase confidence that what you are reading is actually reliable.

Until then though - trust what you read on Wikipedia at your own risk.

"Jude wrote:

...That is what democratization does to knowledge - and that is scary..."

But democraisation here is classic Trotskyism or anarcho-capitalism.

The potential problem has always been there, but we have just been made more aware of the hidden biases which we are all guilty of through our not being omniscient in the mundane sense of our not seeing all from all angles.

Writers and editors have imperfect knowledge so write and publish only what they 'think' is accurate. The problem is, they're often wrong to some extent or another. Look at what happens when information is released under the 30 year rule etc. The assumptions for past reasoning all go out of the window!

This was my point about science as the last bastion when it comes to pursuit of truth. It' not perfect, but it is at least cumulative, and potentially falsifiable. It requires extensive training though, so by definition it is elitist.

It is *that* which New Labour (and the anarcho-capitalist Conservatives before them) have put at risk with their absurd dogma of egalitarianism.

They have subverted science just as they have the Civil Service over the past 20 years, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not. This has been done through equlities legislation which assumes no ground differences in cognitive abilities (ethnic or sex based, but that is empirically false)

It is naive (or quite wicked depending on how conspiratorial one wishes to be) Lysenkoism and 'political correctness' at work.

Not meaning to do it does not mean that it is not being done, That is what's so tragic. Most of what we do wrong is through our meaning well, but not seeing the consequences of our actions clearly, alhough telling most people that they can't see what they're doing that's in error, is notoriously difficult (for what should be obvious reasons, but a moment's reflection should make clear are not!).

The notion that the democratization effect of the internet is leading to civil public discourse and the undermining of 'real' experts is a bit arrogant and in the same vein as when intellectuals in the 19th century were against the policy of universal education because they thought it only belonged to a selected few.

There are now calls for more responsible amateur/professional bloggers to uphold more responsibilities to respect copyrights and quote resources on the record or off. Blogs are being used in a lot of major media outlets to communicate with younger and or alternative audiences. 大象传媒, Guardian newspapers, New York Times and more now uses blog besides amateur bloggers. Some professional journalists are also bloggers in North America. Readers of the blogs, I hope most would not read from just one type of sources like newspaper, TV or alternative media sites. Readers should always double check their news and that is already made it so easy by Google and Yahoo etc to verify what you read twice or three times. Also news comes so quickly and sometimes with some confusions and inaccuracies that any judgments should be put on hold til more info are obtained.

#123 (Guled)

Is it? It depends what one means by education does it not? Open education up all who have the ability to benefit from it as a function of genetic ability by all means, that is how it should be. But that does not mean one can educate all. That's a formula for subverting the education system (especially the further and higher education system whilst making out it has been enriched). Like height and most other biological characteristics, cognitive ability is normally distributed (a bell curve with clear statistical peoperties). Only some people *can* benefit from advanced education, just as only some require special education. What's happened over the past 20 years without most people (by definition seeing it) is that rather than being explanded, our education system (and especially our higher education system) has in fact been corrupted either by those with an ultra left anarcho-capitalist agenda or who just don't know what they have done by abrogating the responsibiliy the electrorate has empowered them with by being populist - it doesn't matter which, the consequences are the same is the point).

By encouraging more bright females to stay in education longer, especially higher education, they begin families later (if at all), which over several generations actually reduces the average intelligence of the entire population, and particularly reduces the ability in the higher IQ band (say above 130 by about 60% whilt also inflting it below 70 by the same). It does this without most people seeing it happen as it's such a very slow, long term process.

Some 'ethnic' groups which traditionally insist that their womenfolk stay at home and be 'domestic goddesses' don't suffer these dysgenic consequeces, so they grow in numbers and influence, but those groups which encourage sex based equal opportunity, *do* suffer in the longer run (they don't produce enough male or female offspring to replace themselves).

This differential fertility blight is one big reason why we're beginning to see our public services fall apart through mismanagement I suggest.

In the UK, there are two 'ethnic' groups which buck this trend. Both are religious and both are in conflict with each other, both here, and more violently elsewhere in the world. It should be obvious which they are. In many ways what they do is right for their long trm survival, what is wrong is what the secular group is doing, as this is now ageing and is under serious risk of extinction through a) low TFR and b) long term dysgenic blight through the above differential fertility. This, to be clear, is the largest secular 'ethnic' group of all in this country (and the same is true of the USA).

We should be asking how this has evenr been allowed to happen I suggest, so should Newsnight.

#123 (Guled)

Is it? It depends what one means by education does it not? Open education up all who have the ability to benefit from it as a function of genetic ability by all means, that is how it should be. But that does not mean one can educate all. That's a formula for subverting the education system (especially the further and higher education system whilst making out it has been enriched). Like height and most other biological characteristics, cognitive ability is normally distributed (a bell curve with clear statistical properties). Only some people *can* benefit from advanced education, just as only some require special education. What's happened over the past 20 years without most people (by definition seeing it) is that rather than being expanded, our education system (and especially our higher education system) has in fact been corrupted either by those with an ultra left anarcho-capitalist agenda or who just don't know what they have done by abrogating the responsibility the electorate has empowered them with by being populist - it doesn't matter which, the consequences are the same is the point).

By encouraging more bright females to stay in education longer, especially higher education, they begin families later (if at all), which over several generations actually reduces the average intelligence of the entire population, and particularly reduces the ability in the higher IQ band (say above 130 by about 60% whilst also inflating it below 70 by the same). It does this without most people seeing it happen as it's such a very slow, long term process.

Some 'ethnic' groups which traditionally insist that their womenfolk stay at home and be 'domestic goddesses' don't suffer these dysgenic consequences, so they grow in numbers and influence, but those groups which encourage sex based equal opportunity, *do* suffer in the longer run (they don't produce enough male or female offspring to replace themselves).

This differential fertility blight is one big reason why we're beginning to see our public services fall apart through mismanagement I suggest.

In the UK, there are two 'ethnic' groups which buck this trend. Both are religious and both are in conflict with each other, both here, and more violently elsewhere in the world. It should be obvious which they are. In many ways what they do is right for their long term survival, what is wrong is what the secular group is doing, as this is now ageing and is under serious risk of extinction through a) low TFR and b) long term dysgenic blight through the above differential fertility. This, to be clear, is the largest secular 'ethnic' group of all in this country (and the same is true of the USA).

We should be asking how this has ever been allowed to happen, so should Newsnight's science team.

Lets go back to the good old days. How far before we reach a better life and less informed than today? The second or first world war: The British Empire? Have a peek around Madam Tussaud鈥檚 and see the side of restriction and ignorance in the past. Anything will be abused and used if there is money or control in it! The way forward is through understanding and this does not come with ignoring the unstoppable or running round in circles screaming, don鈥檛 panic.

Whilst we have the 大象传媒 (most regretably) being a part-player in the 9/11 drama, and never once since being prepared to honestly review and discuss all the events of that unsual day, maybe it is time for us truly accept that the corporate media establishment is actually our enemy and not our friend.

There is much inanity in such newspapers as the Mail, Telegraph and Guardian and supposed intellectual rubbish as the Spectator and New Statesman.

One has to be highly discerning in what one 'eats' as our brain food. To me it is only programmes like Newsnight and papers like the FT, The Times and the Economist which try to inform their readers rather than instruct their readers how they must vote.

Anyone going to say the Today's programme's messageboard will see how bad it can be. Say anything intelligent and the Far Left and Far Right hoods who seem to inhabit the place will seek to bombard the site with crazy ideas.

The idea of a Messageboard or blog is ONLY good if the moderator is a responsible experienced and sensible chairperson.

Having chaired many public meetings I know well enough that there are plenty of people in the mid range between either partial or outright madness and lucidity.

What amazes me is how many people in our schools and universities haven't learnt the first notion of how to marshal any kind of rational, evidence based argument.

Nickey (#130) - A point, and one which may seem pedantic to some, but it's an important one,and not all that obvious, so please excuse the 'lecture'.

Argument is about validity not truth. The truth of a statment is an empirical matter, one of scientific evidence. Truth pertains to whether what we assert in language (a proposition about the world) corresponds empirically with the facts.

Too much store is set by argument, and too little by truth. One can make a coherent, valid argument, one which is very persuasive, but where the premises are false. This is the art of rhetoric, or peruasion, and it serves con-men as well as more benign users.

What matters is truth. (Deductive) inference is just an aid in science when one is dealing with lots of facts. It is no good by itself. So neither is argument. That's what isn't taught well enough these days, and the cost of that is very high to us all.

The Internet is the whole world's library, so vast is the information available that such a statement by Andrew Keen is ridiculous. The range of information available is simply mind boggling.

There are blogs out there that put mainstream tabloids to shame, in fact every morning, I skip the daily press and head straight for my bookmarked blogs.

It is clear that a revolution has taken root, information that was simply not available pre Internet is now only a keystroke away in the comfort of one's own home. I doubt whether there is any subject that one can not access where there is an absolute plethora of views on any one subject.

What does it all add up to? The MSM have lost the initiative, namely, the unchallenged means to mould, manipulate and form opinion among the masses.

Is this revolution hurting the MSM? You bet it is, this blog in which we are participating is in direct response to the challenge of the blogosphere - we live in interesting times.

#126 Dysgenesis: Have I got this right?

Ethnic and religious minorities in the UK have large families, a large proportion of whom are genetically unable to benefit from higher education, though those who are should have it.

Clever white women (I am referring for convenience to those of genetically determined high cognitive ability as 'clever', and to non-ethnic people as 'white') must have lots of clever children (with white men?) while they're at their most fertile otherwise clever white people will gradually be eliminated. I'm not completely clear what role white people of low cognitive ability will play, or whether the clever gene can be inherited.

A cycle of encouraging bright females to stay in education is a mistake and should be avoided because the children these women have are gradually reducing the average intelligence of the entire population. As I don't wish to blindly participate in the destruction of my kind I should discourage my clever daughter from high educational achievement and encourage her to have lots of clever children early. [OR she could do what I did: children first, higher education second.]

Groups which encourage sex based equal opportunity (clever white heterosexual people?) are bringing about the destruction of their own kind and also public services by buying into a populist agenda underpinned by a conspiracy to eliminate white people, in which sinister unnamed forces are complicit.

Our education and higher education systems have been infiltrated by people who are either complicit in bringing all this about, or not clever enough to notice it happening.

The largest secular 'ethnic' groups in the UK and the USA (white people?) are ageing and under serious risk of extinction. This has been allowed to happen and we need to know why. Good luck with that one Susan Watts. I can't imagine how this has remained unnoticed for so long. Oh, wait I forgot... the sinister forces.

#133 You don't understand. Please go back and look much more closely at what was actually written and do not translate. It might help to follow up the link to the CIF comments after the "Demographic Warfare" article as more is explicated there.

What I outlined here is a combination of standard population/quantitative genetics and work in group differences in educational attainment as well as IQ. This is largely inherited.

The dysgenesis work has a long history all way back to Darwin, Galton, Fisher, Pearson and the beginning of multivariate statistics and quantitative genetics. The basic idea was updated by Herrnstein in 1989 and further by Herrnstein and Murray in 1994, and Lynn in 1996.

This has less to do with colour than with group TFRs and gene barriers.
The problem drove Singapore to run pro-natalist policies from the 60s
through 90s (which failed), and China to pass legislation in the 1990s.

It's been well researched by the UN and the basic concept of the demographic transition is central to human geography and economics. We now live in Service Sector orientated economies which favour female, not males skills. That's part of the problem, and why this will be so hard to change, if we can at all.

The key behavioural economic principle to bear in mind is known as 'hyperbolic discounting', which holds across most species, and *does* mean that brighter females (of whatever colour, melanin(s) are not the issue, gene barriers are) do more readily see the costs of having larger families, and so limit the size of them if they can. This is the dilemma.

These are all empirical facts born out by the official statistics. It's
best not to make inferences, as they are likely to lead one to error.
What was set out in #126 is basically a condensed list of empirical facts.

Arguing about these (or trying to colour it with political correctness) will not change those facts, it will just muddy the picture and make it harder for some to see.

Becoming better aware of the facts might make the consequences easier to manage.

This *is* happening. There's no need to attribute this to anything
sinister. We are just not bright enough to see the consequences of many of our wishes/actions and policies.

What's outlined in #126 is a long term feedback loop, or recursive
function, which many people have difficulty grasping. Some groups appear to have adopted religious diktats/proscriptions, which serve to mitigate the adverse consequences, but this requires the sacrifice of some of our secular values, the most obvious of which is sex equality.

Secular groups have abandoned these mores over the past century,
probably to their longer term cost. Religious groups such as the Muslins
and the Orthodox Jews have not abandoned them, and do not have low TFRs. Secular groups (like Europeans, but not exclusively, as there are secular 'Christians' 'Jews', 'Muslims' etc, though they are seen as 'lapsed' have. The point to note is the sizes of the secular groups, as that's why 'white' figures so highly in this picture. Europe is predominantly white, as is the USA and Australia/NZ (though it won't be long before USA isn't). Japan is in a slightly better picture than European states because of its gender traditions. Korea has the problem too. It is developed countries. Russia is worst off. Do not take Sachs seriously. For these nations he is wrong.

The demographic transition and differential fertility are extremely well researched. A lot goes unnoticed in science for peculiar reasons. Politicians try to deal with the consequences of low TFR by opening up borders in order to encourage the immigration needed to compensate for low TFRs, as with the current below replacement level TFRs, populations are ageing (which hides the problem for a while), and this poses dire problems for pensions, as well as essential services. Who will run them?

It is going unnoticed in the USA too. It is understood by researchers who know the fields, but it is not an easy thing to grasp. It is made even more difficult by the process of dysgeneis itself, and by 'political correctness'

Please bear in mind that it's precisely because of hostile
receptions like #133 that this important matter is not more widely
understood, and there *are* vested group interests at stake too.

We have had rising crime since 1945, and we've had growing problems in our schools and public services, so much so, that we now see the state services being privatised as we can't recruit the staff to run them effectively.

What is knowledge ? Is there a kind of wisdom out there some where which can only be dispensed by a learned few, and which the rest of us must bow to and follow, only able to ape in its wake ? Is there a truth about anything that exists beyond our opinions, either individual or collective. Surely the openness of the internetian world reflects the true state of knowledge as opinion, as opposed the world of the hard copy text, open only to the favoured few, and yes some bright gems too, but they will always have their chances. They just have to take them alongside a multitude of views..tough.

鈥楩ull many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear,
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.鈥�

I don鈥檛 think the availability of dross on the net via blogs or wikipedia makes one jot of difference to that particular 鈥榯ruth鈥�..that鈥檚 just my opinion though.

What Andrew Keen says is, generally, true. When people start to share information, and share their lives, they become better people. They connect, they begin refuse the polished commercialized ideals that are sold to them as "professional, better, best, real, quality, reliable" and all of these other names that really are a fabrication of the commercial world and media.

What the author doesn't realize is that people are attracted to things that are free, things that seem true, or believable, but mostly we are attracted to things that are human, because we can connect to to them. People want to feel, people want to be heard, people want to be inspired, and many times we are attracted to what inspires us... not what industry wants to sell to us as inspiring.

I would definitely buy the book just to get pissed off.

#135 Colin Watson wrote: "What is knowledge ? Is there a kind of wisdom out there some where which can only be dispensed by a learned few, and which the rest of us must bow to and follow, only able to ape in its wake"

To the extent that one is talking about empirical truth the answer must be YES. Cynicism is symptomatic of one not appreciating the necessity of this, it's how this subversion operates, and most of it is unwitting.

Science (pursuit of truth) *is* an elite game. Our cumulative body of
knowledge (rather than that of personal opinion and art) *is* managed through selecting workers via the research PhD and *is* peer controlled.

There *are* gatekeepers, there have to be. So yes, it *is* indeed
elitist, how could it be otherwise?

As science (knowing) *is* an elitist business, it's product, knowledge
*is* indeed dispensed by a learned few. How could it be otherwise?

Anarcho-capitalism has been chipping away at this for decades. The media is generally not staffed or run by scientists though, they tend to be
arts graduates who know little about the sciences, and often look upon
it with a degree of disinterest (or they would have studies science
etc).

Look at what's happening as a consequence, ask some university
scientists. or then again, don't, as they find the way that most people
talk to them since Thatcher and Blair began their attack on 'elitism' so offensive and unpleasant that they try to just talk amongst themselves.

One can't readily translate science into ordinary language as the
languages of science are created because the terms do not exist in
ordinary language, that's why there are technical dictionaries.

What we've lost, is respect for what's in our own best interest. We now send nearly half the population to 'university', but look at what they study, and look at how exams have been dumbed down. Every time one goes to the doctor, or dentist, or attends parent's evening, one is supposed to be able to make informed 'choices', i.e. make an 'intelligent' contribution. But how? How can laymen seriously make informed 'choices' on matters which require years of training and experience? All it comes down to in the end is a) undermining of the expertise of the expert and
b) encouragement of abrogation of responsibility on the part of the
expert, i.e further anarchism. 'Freedom of choice' and 'power to the people' is not what it seems.

People generally don't know what's for their own good, that's why they
turn to others with more experience. Some people are quite happy to make
money out of people by giving them 'choice'. That's why Thatcher-Blair and backers are best seen as anarcho-capitalists. Just remember that Thatcher's (or should I say Keith Joseph's) guru was Hayek of the Austrian School, cousins of the Chicago School (Friedman etc).

Whilst most thought that Thatcher and Regan were hell bent on protecting us against 'the evil empire', in fact, what they were doing was wrecking the welfare state and civil service etc at home. They were asset stripping. The 'neocons' have been at work for decades. Most of the front men are just pretty faces. The irony is, once in a while, an ex-civil servant or cabineyt minister says all this, and nobody believes them!

I value Andrew's views but think it's far too early to be definitive. A generation ago we thought IT was going to give us unlimited leisure time. How wrong we were.

For now I think our capacity for genuine research has improved dramatically with Web 2.0. The main losers are professional bulls**ters - politicians and some academics and journalists - who have suddenly found that they have serious competition.

Adrienne鈥檚 reply (137)raises a lot more questions for me than it answers. So what is empirical truth ? 鈥� and am I really a cynic to say that all perception is subjective ? Of course there are understandings of the world 鈥� particularly in the 21st century from scientists鈥� that I accept and defer to without fully understanding ( I certainly wouldn鈥檛 visit my dentist otherwise). That does not deny that equality of opportunity, available to all, is an essential human value.
And, to return to the subject, the extracts quoted from Andrew Keen's book appear to promote a view that we are all victims of an internet led conspiracy to dumb down culture/human interaction. There is no method of control that would satisfy on the one hand a desire to 鈥榗ut out the dross鈥� while maintaining freedom of expression 鈥� except of course the one we all carry around in our heads, i.e. our own perception of the world 鈥� some things fit others don鈥檛 鈥� its always been like that hasn鈥檛 it ?

#139 Colin Watson wrote:
"Adrienne鈥檚 reply (137)raises a lot more questions for me than it answers. So what is empirical truth ? 鈥� and am I really a cynic to say that all perception is subjective ?"

My post should raise questions.

Epistemology or philosophy of science is, as Quine once said, 'philosophy enough'.

As to whether perception is subjective, well, Quine and Skinner would have urged us to make little use of notions like 'perception' which beg many questions, instead they would have urged us to look at our behaviours (including those we usually term 'seeing', 'saying, 'thinking' etc, as these are best treated as a behaviours, albeit rather poor ones.

The study of the behaviour of scientists is the study of what they do. What they do tells us about the ways of the world, and how useful what they tell us has to be judged in terms of how good it is in improving our prediction and management of it.

These are pragmatic issues, and they have pragmatic answers.

Can I recommend "The Web of Belief" (if you don't have a background in logic and science), and perhaps "Pursuit of Truth" and "From Stimulus To Science" (if you have)?

From Skinner, I'd suggest "Science and Human Behavior" and "Verbal Behavior". A good introduction can be found in the oddly titled talk "On Having A Poem" (which has little to do with poems, and even less to do with psychology and other arcane subjective notions).

(The first and second are worth the time)

I agree with Andrew Keen that many don't realise just how inaccurate Wikipedia is - look at all the blogs that are so lazy that a majority of their links are to it . And that guy who said it was almost as reliable as the Encyclopaedia Brittanica - yeah, right.

Keen is also right in pointing out that real journalism [not the superficial citizen 'journalism'] is under threat.

Not that it has ever been perfect - look at Fox 'fair and balanced' News. But at least organisations such as the 大象传媒, Guardian, Telegraph and Reuters have a reputation which would erode if their accuracy and impartiality were left to rot.

Anyone who has ever read 'Guido Fawkes' [guilty, your honour] will know that he never lets the facts get in the way of a good story. Other blogs may try to be more accurate, but you are never going to get the whole picture - they are unashamed about their lack of impartiality.

But when 'Sky News' coverage of the Madeleine McCann case is neutralising coverage of 'foreign news', and the Telegraph is getting back on foreign correspondents to fund expansion of its website, we are heading for the scenario where the blogosphere fills the gap.

And anyone who has spent any time at all reading 'Comment Is Free' will find that an alarming, if not rather terrifying, prospect. What hope of the impartial, detailed and balanced coverage of the Middle East issues or climate change when the right-wing corporations get their retaliation in first on that ??

#134 I have understood something; whether it's what you intended me to understand is a different issue. I'm just very dismayed by the absence in these empirical facts of the reality of individual human experience and feeling. We are groups, but we're also individuals, and this can and does have a profound bearing on the wider world for good or ill. There was one Shakespeare, there was one Stalin. We can no more control the future than whether we get hit by a bus tomorrow, but we can choose whether we spend today presaging good or ill. No one lives an empirical life.

My experience in schools is quite different to your observations on them. I don't expect that to affect your views any more than yours affect mine. I expect that we'll amicably agree to disagree.

Even if all these facts are irrevocably and indisputably proven, in reality the control that can be exerted over this issue is nil. If the earth is hit by an asteroid next Tuesday, the possibility of which cannot be ruled out, I hope I'm constructively employed when it goes.

MJ Menzies #142: A long one, please excuse me, I've broken it down to three parts:

Part 1.

Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to suggest you didn't understand some of it, it was just your scepticism/cynicism that I was confronting. I agree that the way things are it is extremely hard to see what we can do about any of it as I don't think any of us want to see the negative 'oppressive' side to what a reversal of the current contingencies might demand. It is those that people reject. However, not all Muslims think that the way that their sex roles are portrayed to the West is accurate, and at least some of the political activists we are shown are just that, political activists using a vehicle which they know will get Western backing. Maybe we *can* do something about it, but a pre-requisite would be to give up on political correctness and work towards repeal of at least the (long term) destructive aspects to the Equalities and Human Rights legislation. We have great difficulty seeing he long term costs to some of our behaviour, and this is one which demands urgent attention I suggest (see the
hyperbolic discounting function - basically low ability means limited memory and foresight, some folk see the long term consequences of their actions and modify or inhibit their behaviour in the here and now accordingly. We say they are more thoughtful, less impulsive etc).

We appear to be blighted by (unwitting?) 'deception' (or is it just scotoma?) legitimated by these Acts, and I suggest we need to ask some painful questions about which 'minority' groups may currently be profiting from them at other groups' expense. A clue to how this works comes from looking closely at the demographic composition of New York City. It is a heterogeneous city. 2m+ Blacks, 2.7m Whites, 2m+ Hispanic and about 11% (largely East) Asian. But within the white population about 2m is Jewish:

so which is the minority group? This surprised me as by my reckoning that makes 2/3 of the white faces Jewish. If one group promotes immigration and anti-racism policy, and that group is protected as a minority, which group is really disadvantaged (especially if it is also a group which has the highest frequency of an autosomal recessive polymorphism on chromosome 6p21 which may reduce brain gender difference by shifting the females in the more male direction (which is usually better spatial than verbal) and the males towards the female pattern (usually verbal better than spatial).

Things are rarely as they seem.

to be continued.

I'm not so keen on this fellow, Keen, or his book the "Cult of the Amateur.
See, I like my little bit of freedom being an any day, any minute, any second "Internet Dabbler"!

Part 2:

One consequence of dysgenesis is that the average person finds it progressively harder to see the implications of basic statistics (which we're ill-equipped to grasp at the best of times - see below):

We tend to neglect base rates, and we have even greater difficulty with joint base rates (joint frequencies, crosstabulations, and more advanced measures of association like correlations and regressions). Even with computerised statistical technology and population level data (as now collected across many government departments) we often get it wrong, so the average person in the street has next to no chance, they believe what they see and have no idea how representative that really is most of the time (hence the example in part 1).

Although western governments have resorted to importing labour as a solution to their low TFRs, most immigrants tend be low-skilled (i.e. have average or below average IQs). Whilst this may meet short-term labour and revenue needs, in time this can only exacerbate our underlying demographic problems as their progeny too will contribute to the demand for services, and given the aforementioned relationship between IQ, self-care and forward planning, demand for services must surely increase as times goes by? The difficult question one has to ask is will there be sufficient technocrats in the future to provide those essential services if that part of the population is being thinned out through differential fertility (and emigration)?' What's left of our welfare state today seems to attract low-skilled migrants, who in the end look like they can only destroy it. They kill their golden goose but can't see how because they aren't bright enough. Like children, they think 'the government' will sort it out.

The problem is that cognitive ability can't be pumped into people through 'education, education, education', despite what New Labour promises. Their Lysenkoist promises to the contrary, such talk appeals only to those who have 'aspirations' but little understanding of how education selects genetically expressed innate dispositions,
routing or shaping what's already there (it doesn't inculcate de novo). In effect we have 'searchlights' (some with weaker beams in some areas than others), not 'buckets' to be filled up with knowledge/skills as society
demands, so the rhetoric we hear about raising standards (e.g. more people being brought above average in literacy, numeracy etc is just ignorant PR gobbledegook written either by people who haven't a clue what an average is or don't care. Like it or not, education doesn't turn sows' ears into silk purses (it may find the occasional stray, and it would be nice if those were representative, but they're just exceptions which make opportunity mandatory). Ability, like height, is normally distributed, and there are mean differences between groups and nations because of gene barriers. We are living on borrowed time (the indigenous population is ageing, and when they die, the population will fall - for a TFR of 1.1 it halves in less than 40 years - see Russia. Our national TFR is about 1.77, but it is inflated by immigrants' high TFRs). Without them, we would be even worse off in the short term. We will just pay in the long term.

Some readers of these comments will pick up on this. Others will no doubt balk, arguing that they want it all to be otherwise. Ideally, we would all want it to be otherwise. I just urge the sceptics to search for the evidence on heritability of intelligence, as what I'm writing is based the best that we know from behaviour genetics. That it's at odds with what most people seem believe is worrying, and is why Newsnight should ask politicians etc some hard questions.

Sadly, the way things are going (and note, they have been going this way for decades, it's just been ramped up by Blair and 'education, education, education' sadly) there just won't be enough bright people about to deliver what's required shortly (and we see some of the effects all about us now), and that's because our sex equality legislation over the past 80 years or so has delayed/limited family size, particularly amongst the more able. Note that brighter males will generally be forced to marry less able females as they'll be the only ones willing to have kids and stay at home. With fewer and fewer in each subsequent generation (but more of the less able, which are growing rapidly at the other end of the bell curve, the 'burgeoning masses' are likely (from past experience looking through past and current times) to accuse those who are left with 'corruption' when they fail to get what they expect in services and government (as we see in Nigeria, Bangladesh & elsewhere. Bangladesh is rated the most corrupt. Are we to expect the same to happen here if those who form enclaves in Tower Hamlets and Newham behave like those back home? If not, why not? What will have changed? Note, the sad fact is that those behaving this way generally don't see it - it's a scotoma - so they deny it and are offended when it is pointed out).

I'm not sure what's gone wrong in say Muslim countries, but I suspect their lower mean IQ may at least in part be put down to the dysgenic effect of consanguineous marriages. The basic rule is that before industrialisation there is a positive correlation between IQ and fertility, but after industrialisation, the correlation is negative.

Now, some of the details above may need tweaking, but it's a dynamical system I'm outlining and the gist of it is sound.

There's an elephant in the room. Time to ask a few questions Newsnight?

Part 3: Final part.

Our current crop of politicians don't appear to be much more than papering over the cracks whilst selling off more of the family silver, as both know that turkey's don't vote for Xmas and that we have a major problem (apart from running out of oil reserves in areas that we have easy access to). They know that to reverse the problem requires draconian legislative change (so we see a split Home Office so they can concentrate on tightening up the highly visible to the public maintenance of law and order in the Home Office whilst burying the less visible containment and management of offenders in the Department of Justice. As I see it, a smaller indigenous population is no bad thing in their eyes, but my point is that this is to the advantage of other minority groups. What we see under attack is the indigenous middle class.

Remember what happened to Major's party when they tried calling for a return to 'family values' in the early 1990s? It led to party collapse, which in turn ushered in 'Blair and The Spinettes".

Why has the economy done well? Two changes probably: *mass computerisation* which has automated and therefore papered over the problem for a while (but note how many problems government now faces with its large computer projects, it can't get the people to use the systems properly, why?) The second is further *de-regulation*, more of
the state system has been sold off to the private (and shortly Third) sector, so investment from abroad comes flooding in whilst there are rich pickings. Even government data management has been farmed out. But this can't last as it's destroying infrastructure and widening the wealth gap. Property prices have become a nightmare for the upcoming generation and all of the above contributes to the differential fertility problem in that those eligible for social housing suffer least (and so breed more), whilst those with more native ability have to work harder and struggle more to raise a family. Blair and partners have given mismanagement of the country to free-market anarcho-capitalist predators who fuel the problem whilst making out they are the solution. When they've had their fill we'll see them move elsewhere, as they're 'globalists', 'internationalists'. That seems to have been the pattern elsewhere where this has been done (see the tiger economies).

Some may complain about sexism when none is meant here, it's just sexual dimorphism. Men can't have babies, nor are they equipped to raise children. Other's with vested interests may complain about radical Islam and the terrorist threat (whilst Meacher, an ex-cabinet minister, controversially tells us all that it's bogus, rather grave
Neoconservative dirty tricks.

I'm in no place to judge that, but just remark that it's remarkable that such a senior member of the government at the time should ever make the assertion, and live to stand as contender to Brown as Blair's successor.

What we see in rising crime and disorder in our schools is a growing sector of disaffected youth (largely males as one would expect) threatened by liberal values or jahiliyya (false consciousness). All of this reflects dysgenesis.

There *are* group, i.e family (ethnic) differences, and these are produced and maintained by gene barriers (e.g. assortive mating and religious proscriptions as in Orthodox Judaism), but the disaffection is across the board. It is not just a Muslim problem.

It didn't used to be so. Women left work when they married 50 years ago, and they built families and communities. That is falling apart (look at the divorce rate and frequency of single parent families). Women are out at work.

But you're right to say that there isn't an easy solution. Registration of birth figures indicate that our weak pro-natalist (eugenic) measures aren't that effective, and good parents know why. Kids demand lots of attention (both personal and financial).

The implications are hard to accept, i.e. that good parents invest intensively in just a few progeny which is the opposite of what less bright, less 'good' parents do - it's the r-K strategy, and it has less to do with race than ability and sensible family planning. If less able people have far above replacement level sized families, and more able have below replacement level (2.1) sized families, in time, the IQ of the country must shift left, i.e. we must dumb down. The question then is who provides the essential services? Note, this is not just about a small elite and small underclass. It is a contract between above average vs below average. It's *that* balance which I am drawing attention to.

The logic seems sound and it seems to fit the figures (in education and criminal justice at least). My fear is that unless we somehow reverse this, our economy must ultimately suffer through lack of human capital and failing services.

This appeared in the Telegraph when I was drafting this response:

Why do we not better see these things? Perhaps in part because we're blinded by the spin put out to capture votes from the burgeoning masses, perhaps in part because of the repressive influence of political correctness (derived from Equalities legislation and de-nazification steps in the lae 1940s)and in part it's the creeping effect of dysgenesis (more 'I want it now and want I it right now') in the population, those who want to party today and damn tomorrow), but mainly I suspect it's because, as you imply, we're economically trapped and the facts are so depressing that we try to ignore them.

But note, in passing, two groups *do* buck this trend, Muslims and Orthodox Jews. They both have large families above replacement level (2.1) and they can both afford a few secular dissenters from their families. Their dissenters just make it worse for the secular white indigenous majority (note that one of those ethnic minority groups is white). Groups understandably look after their own family first, and there's nothing 'sinister' about any
of that, it's just gene reservation, i.e. family values. But look closely at who turns out to be the losers. A few years ago, efforts were made to limit the influence of Gangsta Rap etc, but it's a free market,

Give most people what they want ('choice') and the price we'll all pay is the cost of self-abuse (high calorific food, cheap and available alcohol, gambling, pornography/recreational sex, increasing debt - they're all killers in their own way) and thus further dysgenesis. To prevent or reverse that, one requires good parenting/government, i.e more regulation not less, a planned economy not a free market. But where does one get the staff? When a country or family doesn't have good leadership, or it seems to be slipping, it looks for support or it goes under - but what sort of support is provided, welfare, which makes it worse not better. Today, I fear we're heading where Germany was headed after the First World War. The German people welcomed Hitler largely because he promised to clear up a declining situation, they accepted the abolition of democracy and Hitler declared war not so much on Jews as 'Jewish' Bolshevism (so did Stalin incidentally, he ejected Trotsky in 1928 and purged the party and army of Bolsheviks or internationalists). We have people like Blair's namesake (Orwell) and Hayek to thank for the loss of our 'Stalinist' welfare state and democratisation of all. The counter measure may possibly be happening again (see all the current tightening up of 'anti-terror' legislation which seems to some to be just their answer to the dysgenesis they've stoked as they've continued Thatcher's agenda.

We may have some lessons to learn from from the Muslims (although clearly not all). In logic, the quantifiers SOME and ALL, are related in that SOME=NOT(ALL), or AT LEAST ONE, and ALL=(NOT(SOME)), and that takes us back to the difficulty we all have with statistics and seeing what's going on ;--).

As a supplement, here are just a few links to today's news which may be worth a glance regardless of how one responds to the three part comment above. It isn't hard to find more. The basic message I want to make is that there can be too much of a good thing and that the promotion of 'freedom', 'choice', 'equality' an 'democracy' or 'power to the people' may have sounded great from John Lennon, but from politicians it's just cynical rhetoric which justifies abrogation of responsibility which lets businesses take advantage of innocents. The curse of democratisation in that by making out that all people are they same, it can be made out that whatever they choose to do is all on their own heads - their 'choice'. In fact, 'caveat emptor' holds, and a blind eye is turned to the fact that most can't protect themselves.

It shouldn't take much thought to see just how wrong this ideology is and why many 'authoritarian' nations don't want the sort of 'democracy' which Bush and Blair exported to Iraq being exported to their patch of the planet. I'm sure there's lots more than meets the public eye, but the way matters have gone in recent times, the general public on both sides of the Atlantic seems more and more sympathetic with our so called 'enemies' than our own leaders. This has gone so far that I sometimes ask whether that might not have been the entire agenda in pursuit of globalisation!

Domestically, with respect to our National Curriculum and SATs, the Sun may well have it right. The National Curriculum did bring standardisation to teaching across the country. What it may now be highlighting is that average ability is falling (see The Massey Report for some pointers) and many ultra-leftists don't want us to be too cognizant of that as it undermines the free-market anarcho-capitalist nonsense. Like it or not, teachers tend to imbibe Marxist/Lysenkoism. It's not so much that teachers are failing pupils as pupils not being up to the standards and teachers not being able to turn sows' ears into silk purses. They would like to think they can, but they are not alchemists. There may indeed be problems with 'teaching to the test', plagiarism from the net, and over feminisation of the curriculum (we live in a service sector dominated not manufacturing economy these days so that's inevitable perhaps). It does have its costs given that females are more egalitarian.

The last link is to a recent paper on dysgenic fertility. The link in the middle is interesting in its own right, but needs authentication. The comments are also worth a look.

An example of NOT the type of Islamic eugenics we'd like to see proliferate (hence the all, some talk above ;-)

Can I blog you this question, who in God's name is, "Andrew Keen"?

Jaker: Ironically... a blogger from Golders Green (now resident in the States evidently).

Atypically (and ironically) he doesn't appear to like anarcho-capitalism. I thought they moved to Golders Green!

Still, it's very hard to work out what anarchists/Trots ever build. They seem to be very good at blowing things up (usually other people's stuff mind you). They then buy it all up on the cheap so I'm told (see Thatcher's mob).

The book's author is against of freedom of speech and nostalgic of censorship times[the Lord Chamberlain's fan]. He says information should be portioned and distributed by so-called "experts" like in "good old times". In "good old times" information often was brainwashing and propaganda and lies.

democratization of ideas can only be benficial to society and that have the opportunity to influence the technologies and policies that will enable this is not only a privilage, but our responsiblity. i can't see any benefit to imposing restrictions on idividual thought and suppressing free speech.

keen refers to popular opinion ... he doesn't consider the fact that this can actually be correlated to quality and accuracy. he doesn't give the general public credit for being able to filter/edit information for themselves and suggests that we're just mindless sponges absorbing whatever's put in front of us.

moreover, keen incorrectly views web content as completed/finished work ... it's a work in progress. just like material in the professional media goes through many edits before being published, web content is constantly evaluated (by the masses) until it converges to the truth. if it never gets there, it'll eventually fade out of existence. however long that takes is another question, but there are many examples of bad ideas lasting for decades long before the web (e.g., slavery). the life cycle of ideas is accelerated and exaggerated with the web.

instead of just supressing free speech, why not fight back with better, more legitimate content (supported by the appropriate business model) and compete--don't just simply silence the amateurs (who may in fact be professionals in many cases). if consumers see value, it'll be successful.

i still read the ny times online every day. that's how i found out about this book.

There is no greater disgrace than the knowledge that your government is creating discord and violence throughout the known world. Instead of helping the citizens of sovereign countries with health, water, food, and benefits, the U.S.government has been obligated to overcome those obstacles in achieving its' main objectives of greed, and possession.

The U.S. doesn't want to 'better the lives of citizens in other countries, what it wants it to control those countries and make it a 'model' of the U.S.
And that doesn't work.

D

Re John Coombes 05 Jun 2007

Just as I would have liked to put it.
There is always a fringe industry around something new. Some of it bright and some of it abysmal 鈥� as we can see.

"We need to reform
rather than revolutionize an information and entertainment economy that, over the last two hundred years, has reinforced American values and made our culture the envy of the world.'

Thanks Andrew, just what we need more of, 'American Values' and culture? Maybe the rest of the world wants more than that and that's why they log on. Maybe they're sick of mainstream media being full of American crap.

Thankfully the internet also provides a place to escape your beloved MAINSTREAM media, it offers an alternative to the drivel that fills tv and newspapers. A lot of what is online is crap, and so what? Just like TV, turn it off. Got a book you're not enjoying? Shut it.

And anyway, check any new station on main stream media, and they're begging, via new media, for stories and pictures.

Maybe mainstream Media will lose it's grip......judging by what Keen writes, he's beginning to already.

So the nepotistic media aristocracy feels threatened by us chuffin' commoners. Good. What a preposterous argument.

"[They] can use their networked computers to publish everything from uninformed political commentary..."

Ha! Good one, Andy. Because of course all commentary published in newspapers and magazines is informed...

"Instead of developing technology, I believe that our real moral responsibility is to protect mainstream media against the cult of the amateur. We need to reform rather than evolutionize an information and entertainment economy that, over the last two hundred years, has reinforced American values and made our culture the
envy of the world."

When he argues for a protective ring-fence around the "fourth estate", he is already undermining the "American" values which he is claiming to protect. 200 years ago, Jefferson wrote: "so that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all avenues of the truth".
When Andrew Keen elevates the gatekeepers at the media instutions to a ladder pulling fourth estate, he not only denies the fact of an ever-enlarging (see Paxman et al on popular mistrust of television) departure of the audience to the internet, but he also paternalistically claims that it is for our own good.
Thanks Andrew, but I think I can do my own gatekeeping. I am as good as you when it comes to using google.

Hmm, sounds like an older generation scared of change to me, with a touch of snobbery, wikipedia and social networking sites etc are not competing with high brow resources.

Hmm, sounds like an older generation scared of change to me, with a touch of snobbery, wikipedia and social networking sites etc are not competing with high brow resources.

What is this rubbish? The internet has brought the actual truth to more people around the globe then any other agency, ever. The only thing keeping this from becoming an absolute are governments (China's, for example), and those who provide services bowing to the pressure put on them (Yahoo as another). Viva la DSL Connection!

As a newcomer to the internet and to the world of computers in general I think the oppertunities the web offers is nothing but a good thing.
Having been teriffied of anything to do with computers in the past my break through came when I started taking a course with learn direct.
This enabled me to at least start understanding some of this complex and facinating cyber-world.
As for the internet somehow dumbing down society in some way? what a load of rubbish!Just another thing for the infinite moaners in this country to harp on about.

When the Newsnight book club introduction can write that "old media *IS* facing extinction" it's too late, folks - the damage is already done!

I agree that a lot of this "You" rhetoric is illusory, nothing but a veil to hide a new brand of advertising. Nevertheless, I'd rather see us have the opportunity for a motivated, participatory culture than an apathetic rule of the expert. Online virtual communities like blogs, wikis and forums have the potential to be fluxuating entities: digital versions of town-halls, writers' workshops and conventions. Yes, people surfing the net need to be critical of what they accept as truth. So what? We've been spoiled by the idea of the Google oracle who can offer instant answers. Those who want 'truth' will actively seek it out and probe various sources.

If we are worried about the deluge of 'sub-par' content, why do so many 'scholarly' journals and papers require atrocious subscription fees? How am I suppose to learn this way? Why is there no preview of Keen's book on Google books? (Thanks 大象传媒 for posting what you did.) All Keen is doing is hiding an elitist agenda behind a veil of morality.

One only needs to be seriously ill to understand the difference between the worth of the knowledge of the professional and that of the amateur. True, there are areas where they do not matter. But in many areas, especially very important areas, we need and must respect professional opinion.