I’ve read some absurd things in my time, but this
one really takes the cake. It’s by a ‘big media’ guy at CBS News, who has
written an astonishing spiel about what he regards as ‘Web 2.0’. It’s actually
the first compelling thing I’ve read about Web 2.0 all year, but it was
compelling because it was so hilarious. In one longish article, the writer Andrew
Keen not only outlines his theory that Web 2.0 = Communism – he also manages to
invoke Orwell and Franz Kafka too!! Now, I know I promised not to blog about Web
2.0 this year on Read/WriteWeb – but trust me, this article by Keen will have
you rolling in the aisles. Here’s an excerpt:
“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.”
Now back to your regular scheduled blogging…
