Andrew Keen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and blogger, recently argued that the roots of the Web 2.0 movement creepily echoed the concept of self-realisation underlying Marxist philosophy. This is one of the central hallmarks of the Bildungsroman, strectching from Goethe's Young Werther, carried forward as one of Marx's Hegelian holdovers. Keen is not held backand relays one of the most quoted parts of Marx:
Sounds familiar? It's eerily similar to Marx's seductive promise about individual self-realization in his "German Ideology:"
Whereas in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
Keen describes Web 2.0 as a utopian project to construct new technologies that allow individuals to publish their creative endeavours in music, art, or other forms of print media. The reduction of barriers to entry has had a radical effect on the traditional media. Keen portrays the movement as ideologically driven by a broad grouping of Silicon Valley veterans, fusing the dynamics of the 60s counter-culture with the techno-utopianism of the 1990s. It is an awkward fit as the New Left is shoehorned with libertarianism and the diversity of the figures cited lends doubt to the utility of the argument beyond a straw man network effect:
Just as Marx seduced a generation of European idealists with his
fantasy of self-realization in a communist utopia, so the Web 2.0 cult
of creative self-realization has seduced everyone in Silicon Valley.
The movement bridges counter-cultural radicals of the '60s such as
Steve Jobs with the contemporary geek culture of Google's Larry Page.
Between the book-ends of Jobs and Page lies the rest of Silicon Valley,
including radical communitarians like Craig Newmark (of
Craigslist.com), intellectual property communists such as Stanford Law
Professor Larry Lessig, economic cornucopians like Wired magazine
editor Chris "Long Tail" Anderson, and new media moguls Tim O'Reilly
and John Batelle.
Keen is aware of his own leanings. Web 2.0 is drawn as an ideology and a political endeavour in order to level the playing field and allow his cultural conservatism to come into play. With arguments that echo those hurled at the development of mass media at the beginning of the twentieth century, Keen laments the passing of a common culture, the rise of mediocrity and the destruction of the existing elite. The future is drowned by dross. With the rise of more enthusiasts and more voices, Keen laments that the role of the media is lost and that personalised media will reflect individual preferences, losing sense of a wider world.
Is this a bad thing? The purpose of our media and culture industries —
beyond the obvious need to make money and entertain people — is to
discover, nurture, and reward elite talent.....Elite artists and an elite media industry are symbiotic. If you
democratize media, then you end up democratizing talent. The unintended
consequence of all this democratization, to misquote Web 2.0 apologist
Thomas Friedman, is cultural "flattening." No more Hitchcocks, Bonos,
or Sebalds. Just the flat noise of opinion — Socrates's nightmare.
Keen's description is a travesty of developments within the internet this century. There is little or no evidence that culture has 'flattened' and, given the new transnational communities that have arisen over the internet sharing interests, ideas, and enthusiasms, one wonders what is so bad about people talking about subjects that they enjoy (except for the killing kinds). Only killjoys would wish to prevent that.
The other half of the lament fears the cacophony of conversations and the passing of a common culture. In this case, the common culture was derived from a shared history and a mass media. It has little in common with the elite practices that Keen drags out of the past, and does not reflect the shared knowledge of the classical tradition that entrances him. The mass media is a brief technological moment, already passing. Common cultures must be shared voluntarily, subscribed to deliberately, or they do not deserve to exist. Those which have been imposed and coerce the information space that their members act in, tend to fall. It was the Soviet Union, conservative in culture and nurturing of elites, that finally fell, not the open societies.
One of the unintended consequences of the Web 2.0 movement may well be
that we fall, collectively, into the amnesia that Kafka describes.
Without an elite mainstream media, we will lose our memory for things
learnt, read, experienced, or heard. The cultural consequences of this
are dire, requiring the authoritative voice of at least an Allan Bloom,
if not an Oswald Spengler. But here in Silicon Valley, on the brink of
the Web 2.0 epoch, there no longer are any Blooms or Spenglers. All we
have is the great seduction of citizen media, democratized content and
authentic online communities. And weblogs, course. Millions and
millions of blogs.
It must be such a chore to be one voice amongst many.