A 2014 Pew Report revealed that 90% of Americans think that the Web has been good for them personally with 76% believing it has been good for society. The latest estimated users of the Internet around the world is 3 billion (more than 40% of the world's population). There is no debate about the usefulness of email, social media, e-commerce, and mobile apps.
Andrew Keen has been dubbed by The Guardian as "the man Cyberspace loves to hate." He is an entrepreneur who founded Audiocafe.com in 1995 and built it into a popular first generation Internet company. He is the executive director of the Silicon Valley salon FutureCast, a columnist for CNN, and the author of Digital Vertigo and Cult of the Amateur.
In one slam-bang paragraph, Keen offers the nub of his criticism of the Internet as "The Answer."
"Rather than creating more democracy, it is empowering the rule of the mob. Rather than encouraging tolerance, it has unleashed such a distasteful war on women that many no longer feel welcome on the network. Rather than fostering a renaissance, it has created a selfie-centered culture of voyeurism and narcissism. Rather than establishing more diversity, it is massively enriching a ting group of young white men in limousines. Rather than making us happy, it's compounding our rage."
Keen covers other gripes about the Internet in this thought-provoking work: rather than erasing the chasm between the rich and the poor, it is fostering this division; rather than creating more jobs, it is contributing to unemployment; rather than enriching citizenship, it is bolstering consumerism. Keen calls for changes but is savvy enough to know that those who profiting the most from the Digital Revolution have their own plans for our technological future.
