Andrew Keen and the battle against User Generated Content

I haven't read the commentator referred to by the OP and I don't intend to, but I would like to put up a word in support of amateurs by saying that civilization itself, north south east and west was started by amateurs and is largely sustained by amateurs.

Another point, in this world with its over compensated and power drunk corps of professionals, all, even the professionals, are an amateur at something. Do they carry on in those areas in spite of it? Your damn right they do.

The internet as we know it is in serious trouble though, because it is a generator of intellectual energy and political and economic power. It just simply is in the nature of the controlling personalities of this world to seize that power. This is a psychological issue that hasn't changed since the first amoeba started to get Darwinian notions.

Before I start sounding too much like a talking head, let me suggest that people take care of the porn industry. It's the canary in the coal mine. It's the wedge issue. It's the achilles heel of freedom. When they start controlling that you can be sure they are coming for you.

OK I read about 5 pages of this guys book before I wanted to push him off a very tall object, run down the stairs at superman speed, and open up on his screaming falling soon to be corpse with a soon to be banned if the rats in congress have their way Assault rifle.

This guy is just laying the groundwork for the net acts that at first will be censorship by bandwidth allocation. AKA the legislation already proposed allowing your isp to decide what sites to allocate bandwidth to across it's network. Other people however are already howling for censorship and have won on some key issues... Ask paladin press how many books they can no longer sell?

Now some of you might say that books about making explosives and conversion manuals to make improvised pdw's and change your identity are things that shouldn't be allowed to be sold...
I've got a bit of news for you.... Disarmament and regulation/controlled access to strategic supplies and knowledge only WEAKENS our tenuous hold on freedom.

So everyone do themselves a favor and instead of reading this jerkoff waste of air's book pick up some thomas paine, ben franklin, thomas jefferson, federalist and antifederalist papers etc. instead. Not only will you come away enlightened and feeling good about being an american in a time where that is tough. But you will have in one day's reading excised the LIES you have been told about the intentions of the people who drafted our constitution.

Creative states of consciousness are impossible to control. That impacts the installed societal boundaries that guide wealth to specific places. The boundaries are defined by pseudo-rational consumerism and are sheathed in faux skins of corporate creative rights and controls. The true creatives they employ operate, barred any vision, under the floors of the powerful institutional controllers, who see markets in everything and demand them all.

Creators, hired by the visionless and policy-sequestered in the underbellies of the media institutions, poisoned by their own fear for their careers and whose works are force channeled through heavily lobbied paths of legal profit by the corporate controlling entities, enhanced by costly marketing positions and field advantage, to saturate media and protect their markets by raising the entry fees for general (so called unprofessional) competition, effectively economically outclassing them. (taking a breath) That has changed dramatically in the last two decades with innovation for the common person.

The greatest blow to these giant conglomerate entities was the personal desktop computing industry that allowed the creative to produce at a comparable production value, utilizing desktop sound technology and then video, Flash, interactive and more recently for social collaborative networking, including all the above. Garage bands and visual creatives dilute markets, and the large media detest such competition because it cannot be controlled easily. Hence the countering publicity campaigns rattled off by operatives like Keen.

Individuals like this are the intellectual lap dogs of an industry who want to control all their markets and acquire any emerging opportunities for additional profits. He was educated and acquired in spirit by this industry. Should we be surprised?

We are in a consumer-based society. We are the Eveready batteries they want to cull for profits, (the Matrix?) and if we are not umbilically connected to them we are told we are not significant and are therefore a danger to that society. This dark polarizing consciousness is at the center of all the structures we are told we cannot survive without. We know, the many of us who dare to peek out of the cubical, that we are significant and that we all have access to much more than we are told as creatives and brilliant observers. Even as our very educational system still filters out the creative in our children, by design, since the industrial revolution that needed gears for their factories and not independent thinkers. They want to do the thinking (dictating agenda) for us.

"Most people today think they belong to a species that can be master of its destiny. This is faith, not science. We do not speak of a time when whales or gorillas will be masters of their destinies. Why then humans."

These are the deadening musings of the mechanist elite. They abhor the balance of the vitalist message that we are more than meat computers. There might be too many of us now for eco-sustainability, but that is due to the consciousness we are locked in for lack of creative input. We are more profitable in numbers.

I was creative director for a Web 2.0 company from 02-06. 2.0 was a tag line for a change in the intent of the web for us. We wanted to educate, inspire and empower individuals. We where minimalized by the very powers that that threatened. Our first attempt was cut short one week before release by the dot com crash. Our second try was infiltrated by I believe dot-com-killer operatives after the mysterious sudden death of our CTO. We where doing Google before Google existed, and eventually mimic’s took our ideas and with much more funding developed the concepts. We where starved out of funding because our vision was balanced but put power in the individuals hands.

This guy is just another status-lubricated glorified gear with linear intellectual teeth.

We are more, and we will see this, despite the efforts to control our spirits.

Einstein said something once that I'm sure this guy never read in his certified schooling days... "It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty."

If this man that thinks of himself such an expert on the Internet only knew half of what his sources allowed him to know his head would probably explode. He serves nothing more than wishful thoughts of a 20th century sleep from which we as a group and individuals have most certainly awoken from. Afterall, he's trying to imply that planners will fix everything, yeah they sure planned those gas chambers pretty good as well as Stalin and Mao's little planners sure were experts on the human condition. Planning and experts certainly made things better back then? He'd probably say, well that was different then, we love everyone now. But by the tone of his book he doesn't sound like he loves anyone except those whom will write him checks for saying what he says.

Me and my friend watched this guy on Public TV once and just rolled our eyes and started laughing hysterically about how naive and uninformed this man is on the big picture.

My heartfelt response to Mr. Keen is;

"remember, remember the fifth of November!"

www.rememberthe5thofnovember.com...



Springer...

Let me just say the internet busted open the closed world of entertainment and information where money was raked in on other peoples blood, sweat and tears. What are these educated spin doctors worried about, There cut being swindled away by uneducated internet users, artist, journalist, writers and every one else who ever was locked out of the chance to make money on there own skill and efforts. Hahahahahahaha!

To hell with education.. it's a man made requirement to keep real people out of the Fields these so called educated dominate in order to collect huge salaries on. The internet has opened the door for us people who haven't a chance because of those, who keep the keys to locked doors, out of the reach of people with uneducated marketable skill. Who says an uneducated, untrained, musician can't sell music or artist display his work or writer write stories. The internet allows all of that.