I have to say, Keen made me feel a little insulted when reading his article, "Cult of the Amateur." It wasn't just the fact that he likened internet users to "monkeys," but the whole tone of the article was accusing people who use social networking sites or enjoy looking at youtube as being unintelligent and ill-informed. While I agree with Keen's argument that people are more interested in blog posts and myspace pages than the issues of our world, a part of me wonders if that is such a bad thing. Yes, it is important to know what is going on in our community, state, country, and world, but if a funny video or an interesting profile page makes us happy, I think there is nothing wrong with enjoying that instead of depressing news stories.
When the gatekeepers of information are taken away, Keen argues that the lines between real information and false information become blurred. I have to ask, though, how do we know that anything we read is true? Newspapers and magazines can also be biased and misinformed just as blogs or wikipedia can. How do we ever know who holds the actual truth of the matter. As far as the disapperance of sales of printed publications, it is sad, but things change and we must accept them. Change is always hard, but complaining about it won't solve anything. We need to find ways to fix the problems with these new changes instead of comparing people to mindless monkeys.
I like your point a lot. I also commented on this article, and I kind of supported Keen in that the reason newspaper and magazine sales were down is because people could gain information for free on the internet. Although I didn't talk much about it, I agree when you say youtube is simply fun, and there is nothing wrong with it. Its not like people use youtube to further educate themselves and try to look up information, which is kind of how Keen presented that point.
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