The Cult of the Amateur?

I am enjoying reading the excerpts in the National Post from The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Cultureby Andrew Keen. Now I just saw the author interviewed on The Colbert Report.

I always like a good argument, and Keen knows a lot and is articulate. However, he was a bit humourless on Colbert - lighten up, it is supposed to be a comedy show! His comments about blogs and other information on the Internet does merit some consideration, but I thought he was off base with some points.

Keen, for example, asked Colbert if he believed there were WMDs in Iraq, as though anyone who thought that there were was duped by the ramblings on the Internet. Colbert, in character, said he believed that there were WMDs because President Bush said there were, and that was that. But surely Keen has to agree that this example actually proves the worth of the Internet. It was the word of the US Administration, often backed up by the conventional media, that made the case for the invasion of Iraq. It is the blogging and other postings on the Internet that challenge these standard assumptions.