Gadgetory

Andrew Keene is the author of cult of the amateur how the internet is killing culture which was written in 2007 he has a new book called Digital vertigo and Andrew is here with me today Andrew thanks for being here Dan it's always a pleasure a digital vertical I must say it's a very well researched in fact it's I might call it erudite a little above my head but of course you went to Oxford and therefore you've got to put in all these allusions to these famous people from history but basically your thesis is that the social web and everything about sharing is killing society not just killing culture Wow perhaps I'd go a little further down the first book I wrote about the internet killing our culture now I'm talking about social media killing our species killing the species yes you're gonna buy a week is this an Armageddon story well it's a it's it's it's a it's a story about corpses it's built off Hitchcock's vertigo which is why it's called digital vertigo and it's a book about illustrious corpses the corpses of beautiful women the corpses of technology companies and the corpses of people like you and me who have lost what it is to be human by living so publicly so explain a little bit more about the corpses and and how as human beings we've lost what it means to live publicly well in Hitchcock's vertigo which the book is built off it's a story takes place in San Francisco all around this where a man falls in love with a woman who turns out to be dead and the movies about him making love to that corpse what I fear in our social media age is that we're living like corpses spending our lives broadcasting ourselves to the world and we're losing our inner lives within losing the complexity the privacy how does a corpse broadcast to the world that doesn't seem logical it doesn't seem logical but there's a lot of illogical things happening in today's world I begin the book in London where I'm at the corpse of a late 18th early 19th century utilitarian for could jeremy bentham who has spent the last hundred and seventy years broadcasting himself to the world so that idea of corpses broadcasting themselves goes from Jeremy Bentham in his famous auto-icon at University College London to people like you and I maybe maybe not you and I literally but all of us who have our Auto icons and becoming corpses on our Facebook and Twitter pages now you focus a lot of the book on on Facebook but let me kind of go to the end of the book because I good isn't it well the end is good but I also think it brings up these points and kind of them in a way people could probably understand a little bit better in terms of contemporary society and it's not a big to be fair to it is it no it's not difficult I did actually even if you can write very well we'll put that and here some of your writing you say that Reed Hoffman who was the founder of LinkedIn and an investor and many other social networks including Facebook Reed Hoffman says it's wrong to believe we are social animals you also talk to biz Stone from Twitter and and you say that he is wrong to think that the future must be social and you talked to Sean Parker from Facebook and the social network movie of course that it's wrong that today's creepy is inevitably inevitably today tomorrow's necessity and then you say instead as John Stuart Mill reminds us our uniqueness as a species lies in our ability to stand apart from the crowd to disentangle ourselves from a society and to be let alone and to be able to think and act for ourselves now that sounds like people should be going out into the woods and chopping wood and living by themselves and being off the grid well that's an American that's a typical American response then I'm not necessarily sympathetic to say Thoreau who would argue that we have to leave the grid and go and live in a shack what John Stuart Mill was simply arguing that in a in an increasingly techno centric world he was writing about the Industrial Age in a world in which mass society was coming into being we need to carve outer space where individuals can think for themselves because male argued and I strongly agree with him the innovation creativity is driven by the individual and not by the group so if we want that innovation in our digital age if we want people to be able to think for themselves well why do you why do you think that that everything is moving toward a dumb herd so to speak I fear the social web I see what's coming into place it's not just Facebook although Facebook is the center of what now is being called the the big data or the web 300 economy a link it can tell a like economy as opposed to a link economy we're seeing all around us in San Francisco thousands of startups all focusing on the social enabling all of us on the network to tell the world what we're thinking what we're drinking is to tell the world what you think it's also to get things done for example to be part of a social network I just read about that helps you to find a parking space so is it bad that people would know that I'm looking for a parking space no only if you're on that social network well that's true I'm I'm willing to tolerate social networks that that allow us to find parking spaces but it goes way beyond parking spaces you know that it goes to our musical tastes what we're thinking where we are location networks social location networks like highlight and glance see and as more and more people in the world come on the network we've got two billion now we're gonna have about five million five billion by 2020 with 50 billion intelligent devices we're all going to be living more and more radically transparently and I fear that that is taking away the uniqueness of the inner world of the human being but how does it take away the uniqueness let me quote you again you say that Mark Zuckerberg five-year plan is to eliminate loneliness don't you think that's a bit of an over rotation well it's not at all I mean I think Mark Zuckerberg has said very clearly that his goal is to create a well-lit dorm room in which we can all live I said he's gone beyond the dorm room and it's about sharing so if it's about sharing is sharing inherently something negative or that has evil consequences I don't think it is but I think the kind of radical nature that Zuckerberg once I mean I I'm not using the term eliminating loneliness thoughtlessly I'm quoting Sean Parker who in his new video social startup airtime has specifically said the goal of airtime is to eliminate loneliness I think don't you think that that's a bit of an exaggeration from someone who's a well-known character I think Sean Park is a very smart guy and I think if he says the goal of his new business be speaking more about himself than about the general partner doesn't have to worry about Lohmann this is Sean Parker but I think that's where maybe you're a little bit off you're saying that well if all these people are social socially connected or if you have a billion dollars like Sean Parker you're never going to be lonely I think I was driven I was driven to write the book because I saw a paradox I saw a world in which we're increasingly individualized atomized lonely fragmented where society is breaking out where the social is actually quite weak in parallel with the cult of the social emerging on the Internet and that's not really you just ask you this then if indeed that's the case then how do you account for let's say the United States Congress being so inept in terms of accomplishing anything collaborating doing things more in concert than in complete opposition is that is that from an impact of the social web or from the emerging social revolution I think we're living at her and this is why my book was so historical I think we're living at a a really a truly transitional moment where we're shifting from an industrial mass society to a knowledge digital society I think the problems with Congress with our health system with our media system with the energy system are all part of that I'm not sure how how the problems with Congress are connected with my critique of social media I don't see a connection you don't see one I don't think that social media offers necessarily a solution to the political crisis in in Congress I write about politics clearly social media has an impact in changing ossified systems but I think that is the point we have seen changes we had ossified systems such as Arab Spring although it hasn't turned out as well as people would like we've seen how social webs just Twitter and Facebook are transforming in some ways the political system in terms of the amount of information that's available to people as well as the amount of noise I would accept the fact that social media is having a transformative impact on politics or Kandice certainly in the Arab Spring in Russia I reported on to CNN the Occupy movement the London riots but what I fear is that the fragmentary nature of social media the fact that it isn't really social isn't resulting in coherent political movements look at the failure of the Occupy movement look at the London riots look at the failure really of the the Arab Spring to become an Arab summer and as it now seems to me to be an Arab winter look at the failure even the resistance in including but you look at this photo saying it's the failure of social media to have an outcome that would be preferred by some people as opposed to that social media provided a catalyst and and continues to what I would accept that social media provides a catalyst and I don't mean there's anything I don't there's no doubt about that what I would argue though is then and then many people like Jeff Jarvis or Clay Shirky or many other people believe that it's more than a catalyst and I don't think it is I don't think it's the Holy Grail I don't think it's the solution to our political crisis which I acknowledge exists whether it's in America or in Europe or in any authoritarianism authoritative that unless it sorts out many of its structural issues now you also seem to have an issue with Mark Zuckerberg related to a tiny group of individuals who are becoming remarkably rich based on using data and that data and the product that they produce or used to produce their their their service is the information we give it so how do you relate that to your historical perspective well I think that Zuckerberg and Parker and Sandburg and their they're brilliant people all of them I think they are the cream of our generation until actually I mean all of them all of them I mean that they're clearly brilliant people but at the same time they're a new elite when Sheryl Sandberg's for example says well with Facebook now we can all become authentic or when Mark Zuckerberg says we're all going to live in this wonderfully well-lit dorm room or when Sean Parker says we're going to eliminate learning that's what they're really saying is that I'm gonna control all your data no I'm gonna are they really saying they're gonna control your day but I'm gonna aggregate all your data and monetize it in ways to make myself incredibly rich you have a problem but what what do those products those so-called products get in exchange for offering up all their personal data or some of it well I think the problem is that most people aren't aware of the way these systems were one of the purposes of this book is to argue that free is never really free and in exchange for giving up our data in exchange for using networks like Facebook and Google+ which are free we are essentially handing over our personal data we're becoming the product Hitchcock made film Noirs and that's why I love vertigo so much we're living in a film noir now we are the fall guy we're the Jimmy Stewart in the 21st century movie and people are really disturbed by that last week I wrote a piece for CNN and my lad say CNN on CBS of course well I wrote a piece about all this it got almost twenty ironically enough twenty thousand face book likes many but designed isn't that a positive positive for who for for the whole system and there's a you you're you're writing how Facebook is evil and I don't think Zuckerberg or Samberg a evil but I think they are incredibly opportunistic and I think that we need to push back at that kind of right so let's let's talk about this solutions now what would you propose is a way so that the individual would have more say for I would say three or four parts and this is key and I have a couple of chapters on this in the book the first is as individuals we've got to learn that we need to protect our inner lives that we need to maintain a degree of mystery particularly young people but I don't think it's just a generational issue ultimately it's up to us and we can't really maintain a degree of mystery well what does that mean it means that when that we cannot reveal everything about ourselves on the network because we do away with who we are as individuals if if if I join in every network and tell the world everything I like every come any people do that Robert Scoble well how many Robert's squabbles are there in the world and it's still a very small percentage of its go seven million people in the world yeah but squabbles the future so no you're saying that the future is people who like school in other words I want to broadcast everything I want to be up on a pedestal I want everyone to watch me I want everyone to converse there are 900 people of 900 million people almost a billion people on Facebook now not all of them of course of Scoble but many of them are wannabe squabbles many of them are using this network thoughtlessly without really understanding what they're doing until they lose a job or something else happens there the factual things they could lose a job they could be embarrassed they could lose a spouse and they could lose a relationship with a child but it goes beyond that I think this is new territory for the species we've never lived at a time where we can tell the world everything about ourselves and I think that this book and this debate is about reminds always there have always been exhibitionist and I'm not saying Robert Scoble who's a very well-known blogger and technology person of yours and friend a friend of ours I'm not saying everyone doesn't want to be an exhibitionist in every era with every technology there were always people who wanted to step on the stage and and be seen and viewed and be the life of the party or be be someone you know would be looked up to as opposed to being part of the crowd there's nothing different there it's just the tools are better than there's going to be so you're done you're saying that there's no change in the culture that we're not living in an age of great exhibitionism that when I write about digital narcissism in that book that it's always been the same well if you say putting up a picture of this or that as exhibitionism then yes but if it's simply communicating well because we have these tools I can put up a picture I can tell you what I have for breakfast I can do this to my friends you know people can choose to view that to engage with it or not well I think the readers have to make their own decision I think you're wrong I think that we are living in an age where that kind of exhibitionism is becoming increasingly a salient feature in our culture and if we are and there's no point in the book and then and then I've wasted my time writing and because it's no different from any other time in history although even if it's the same as in any tar the time difference knowledge it's obviously different I mean when you have a company that doesn't really have any technology of its own that's worth well it was worth anyway a hundred billion god knows what it'd be worth today when it has almost a billion members when you have this continual explosion of social technology social apps and platforms in Silicon Valley I mean that's real this isn't just any so what is your what's your prediction for the future but let me come back just to the the solution so the first I think is we all need to think for us of it's not for me to tell people that they should or shouldn't be on the network on a sad day or a Friday or they shouldn't shouldn't be on Facebook I'm not on Facebook I'm on Twitter so everyone needs to make their own decision secondly I think we need to look at government I think government does have a role of not a libertarian and I fear some of the sort of libertarianism in Silicon Valley so I'm sympathetic to legislation in Europe demanding a right to be forgotten for information for users I'm sympathetic to the do-not-track legislation going through the US Congress thirdly I think there's a great role for innovation the market is still key so I think companies like every me reputation.com DuckDuckGo you're seeing more and more companies tech companies really interesting companies driven by the core premise of protecting privacy and finally I think technology has be a solution I like what a Dutch University is trying to develop technology which will enable data to degenerate and I think we've got to as we live more and more on the Internet as it becomes the platform for 21st century life it needs to replicate the world we're used to it needs to conform to what we want and I think data needs to degenerate we need to have situations where the internet learns how to forget if we can teach the internet how to forget than even I will become a fan even I'll go back on Facebook that's a promise Marco I've been speaking with Andrew keen the author of digital vertigo foreseen a time Dan Farber