Prompt's TechBlog

Grand political themes swept the Web 2.0 world this week, as two stories reignited age-old debates about anarchy and cultural debasement.

In a major article in Sunday's Observer, Web 2.0 critic Andrew Keen called for an end to the tidal wave of amateur online content, which he claims is 'killing our culture'. Keen says that the vast number of blogs and other user-generated content is destroying our ability to distinguish the significant from the trivial. He believes that we need a professional creative class - including journalists, writers and film-makers - to act as cultural arbiters and to tell us what's important and what isn't.

Much as I disagree with Keen's hyper-elitist stance on who should and should not be allowed to express themselves online (I notice that at least three of the blogs that are supposedly 'killing our culture' are written by the man himself, and are therefore, presumably, exempt), his concerns may not be entirely fanciful. This week's other big Web 2.0 story was the 'Great Digg Revolt', in which users of the popular citizen media site flooded it with articles revealing HD-DVD decryption codes in protest at the removal of earlier posts of this nature by the site's owners.

In the end, Digg founder Kevin Rose decided he had no option but to give in to the mob, even if it means his site gets shut down by lawsuit or law enforcement. Depending on what happens next, this may prove to be an interesting cautionary tale for anyone who thinks that cultural anarchy in cyberspace is a viable model.

Tags: andrew keen | digg

Labels: web 2.0