Andrew Keen needs a "chill pill"

This blog is about limitations on technology - those imposed by law and other rules, and those imposed by human nature. We always welcome a dose of humanistic-oriented technoskepticism as an appropriate antidote to rampant and un-thought-through) techno-utopianism. But Andrew Keen needs, in my daughter's words, to take a "chill pill". His two most recent works, "Digital Vertigo" and "Cult of the Amateur" are overly alarmist, viewing the end of civilization as nigh due to the rise of the amateur and the fool.  Yes, it is true - traditional institutional gatekeepers of moderated "truth" - great newspapers, encyclopedias, etc. are suffering and having their lunch eaten by blogs, digital startups and Wikipedia.  Yes, that will have a significant deleterious effect on what we consider to be appropriate and acceptable as knowledge. Yet Keen misses several larger truths at work. First, present conditions never continue, and neither will these.  Some of the large media and knowledge companies have adapted to the age of "digital diarrhea" and some haven't; others will certainly take their place. But no need to fret (yet) about them - the major players are doing what they can to reinvent themselves, and the winners in the race to replace them may not be so bad themselves. Second, digital overload, whether from amateurs or professionals, is giving rise to a colossal need for curation. Admittedly, some of that curation is coming from big data algorithms, but some (much?) is from human curation. Count me as dubious that big data, standing alone, can curate properly, or even write a proper and insightful sentence. Full disclosure - my daughter is thinking of attending grad school for journalism. Everyone tells her she's crazy except me. I think that quality writing and quality editing will always have a place - perhaps not in the locations it heretofore had, perhaps to be appreciated in different ways - but a place nonetheless. So, "chill out" Mr. Keen - current trends accentuate the amateur and the stupid in life, but there is plenty of reason yet for hope.