Tuesday 25 October 2011

REVIEW: The Cult of the Amateur, by Andrew Keen


Andrew Keen has recently announced that his new book, Digital Vertigo, is due out in May next year. In the mean time, I've been reading the book that made him the 'Anti Christ of Silicon Valley'...:

A N Wilson in the Daily Mail, the cover announces, considers this ‘a staggering new book… Andrew Keen really knows his stuff… His book will come as a real shock to many. It certainly did to me’.

The first paradox of many: Wilson praises the book whilst simultaneously announcing he doesn’t know much about the subject, and yet this is the quote used to sell it. And again, the implicit argument is: ‘the Daily Mail rates it, so it must be true’. Not the most convincing argument. It is a satisfying ironic twist that it was word of mouth recommendation and comments on social media that actually made me want to buy the book: it seems amateurs do have a use. These may incidental points, but in a book about authority and how amateurs are ‘killing’ our culture, the reliability, integrity and authority of the professionals it references are, necessarily, relevant.

But it gets stranger. The book is framed by two ‘confessions’. The opening of the first chapter states that Keen, whilst a nineties internet professional, was a member of the ‘cult’. The second, tucked away between the endnotes and the index in the acknowledgements, states that despite advocating for professional culture producers, he is himself ‘as a writer, a bit of an amateur’. Not, in itself, a contradiction. But it’s curious at least, in a book that differentiates professionals and amateurs (and their interests and status) so strongly.

Of course, what he says is more important than his role, status or professional supporters (although this rather contradicts the book’s central premise). And it’s a worthwhile, interesting and challenging message: that an ideologically driven misinterpretation of ‘democratisation’ is, through web 2.0, undermining the property rights and business models of cultural producers (including music labels, newspapers and film studios), and that this is resulting in a ‘levelled down’ cultural landscape which is less reliable, lower quality and in many cases, personally damaging. In short, that web 2.0 is killing our culture’.

There’s much that Keen says that seems to me to be true and several areas that have the potential to be especially rewarding seams of enquiry: 
  •  The difference between traditional ‘democracy’ as participation through choices, and so-called ‘democratic’ participation through production; 
  • How a ‘distributed’ model of production changes the relation between culture and capital, with as yet unclear consequences (it isn’t necessarily the case that more people with less capital will produce better results than fewer with more, despite web evangelists’ claims);
  • What effect ubiquitous cultural production has on producers’ ability to make a living and the long-term effects this could have on culture;
  • The creation of billionaire elites who own supposedly ‘social’ networks (and the tension between social and libertarian values that reveals).
However, Keen does not follow these implications up, since he asserts and illustrates his points, rather than systematically arguing them.  Different instances are used to indicate a single general trend, rather than a trend used to illuminate its differing implications for different media, groups of individuals or contexts. As a result, he is more successful in showing that the ground is shifting in our culture than why it matters. Many of the most alarming stories he tells (such as social media’s use in schools shootings and child abuse) mistake the use of social media for an issue specific to its form (speech can be used in the same ways, but is rarely considered in itself a social ill).

Key to Keen’s case is the idea that cultural production by amateurs is necessarily worse.  But T H Huxley’s image of infinite monkeys with typewriters who can eventually write Shakespeare, used several times by Keen, is in fact an illustration of how such an approach is at least theoretically capable of matching the highest standards (it also hints that the key challenge is selection, not production).

The book pins responsibility for ‘killing’ old media on its new replacements, rather than its own failures that allowed them to succeed: the mediocre programming, the recycling of press releases and spin as news, the crimes and cover-ups, the crassness. Many of the authorities that Keen cites have failed, over many decades, to uphold high values (whether in terms of morality or quality). One thinks again of the Daily Mail, but also the Hollywood studios, major music labels and newspapers owned by New International. They are, in many ways, responsible for their own downfall.

When something familiar is replaced by something new, the loss is often keener than the anticipated gain. What we are losing is far more obvious: we can already see it, we are already emotionally attached. But Keen says little about any possible upside to web 2.0: the new ways to access the highest quality work; the value of multiple perspectives; of interactivity, autonomy, devolved power; the talent that finds a way to express itself that would not previously have been possible (perhaps we shall find out that is it not talent that has been rare, as he asserts, but opportunity?).

Nor does he give sufficient credit to the nuanced ways in which those that he uncharmingly calls ‘monkeys’ consume online content. He apparently believes that people treat every Wikipedia entry and every blog post as gospel truth. I believe that most people recognise that both amateur and professional sources can be inaccurate, partisan and incomplete. To claim otherwise is to create a ‘Cult of the Professional’.

But if professionals can no longer assume authority as a right, neither should amateurs. Instead, it is ‘authority’ itself that is being redefined. And whilst Andrew Keen is surely right to assert that there is much at stake in this debate, for that very reason it is a debate in which we should all have the right to participate.

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Data-driven segmentation: a caveat


Data-driven segmentation offers to provide hidden insights into audiences and reveal the most cost-effective ways of tailoring the offer and communications to meet their varying needs. It’s a reasonable claim. There clearly are hidden patterns in audience data and statistical techniques will, by definition, be better at identifying statistical differences than alternatives. Consequently, data driven segmentation can reasonably claim to provide segments that are ‘more different’ than alternative approaches.

However, any cluster segmentation is dependent not only on the differentness of its segments, but on the reliability of ascribing those segments to subsequent samples. These can only be based on a probability of ascribing records to the right category and depend for that reliability on the number of ‘golden questions’ used to do so.

The additional differentiation has to be offset against the ‘fuzziness’ of accurately ascribing the segments and the usability of however many ‘golden questions’ are needed for that level of accuracy.  There is potentially also another layer of ‘fuzziness’ when trying to implement actions based on the segments, since they have not been designed to align neatly with communications channels or categories of audience information. It’s easy to see how this could quickly offset the additional sharpness of distinctions from the original statistical model.

In some cases, this will be the case, in others not. But often, a combination of clusters and ‘hard’ definitions (based where possible on ‘natural’ breaks in distributions of data) will give clearer, more usable results, whilst still reflecting the differences revealed by close attention to the facts. This is the approach TGI Kantar used on the Arts Audiences Insight segmentation. Whilst it’s less ideologically rigorous than approaches that focus solely on the facts in hand, it’s often a more efficient and effective approach. Fewer 'golden questions' can mean less 'gold' expended.