The monkey cult destroying the temple of knowledge.

Byline: mark chillingworth

The monkey cult destroying the temple of knowledge

' book review

"It's the blind leading the blind -- infinite monkeys providing infinite information for infinite readers, perpetuating the cycle of misinformation and ignorance," thunders Andrew Keen in his polemic The Cult of the Amateur, a book, not a blog, about "how today's internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy".

Keen is an ex-web entrepreneur and at times the book reeks of the confessional -- here is a man wracked with guilt for the damage he has wrought as a result of his actions. Now a member of the literati, Keen is looking to assuage that guilt.

Most commentators adopt an evangelical posture on Web 2.0 services such as blogging, Wikipedia and social networking. But Keen's book is a vision of dystopia, where the democratisation of the ability to publish information is a wrecking ball, bringing down not only the companies whose foundations are built on traditional publishing models, but the entire human culture of knowledge and information sharing.

Web 2.0 is creating quantity and drowning quality, according to Keen's persuasive arguments. He uses well-researched ...