"Pick one -- new technology overturns old authority. You can't have it both ways."

A dualism I can get behind. Plus Keen comes off as a bit of an elitist schmuck in everything I've read.

Boing Boing: Shirky explains why Keen is a Luddite:

"...These days, you can't hardly click without running into a clip of Andrew Keen, a failed dotcom entrepreneur who has set out to make a fortune by telling people that the Internet sucks.

Keen's message is essentially that the old media did a great job, without any bias, of picking the "best" work (whatever that is) and making it popular. He says that Internet-driven systems for picking and popularizing work are bad for society, since letting just anyone get a say means that "non-authoritative" people will assume gatekeeper roles, and might choose inferior material. For example, these unwashed clickers might choose DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album over 'N'Sync's blockbuster LP Pubic Beardz.

Keen says that he loves technology, but doesn't want to see it used to tear down our old, fair, balanced, inclusive institutions. The new institutions -- blogs, Wikipedia, Digg, etc -- will be harder to navigate for "the masses," which means that only the techno-literate will get "good stuff," while everyone else will be stuck with kitten videos on YouTube.

Keen doesn't offer any evidence for the worthiness of the old system, nor does he give us any good reason to mistrust the new system (if it's so hard to find good stuff online, why are so many people switching off their TVs and switching on the Internet?).

More importantly, Keen's idea that he's "pro-technology" and "pro-authority" is nonsense. Pick one -- new technology overturns old authority. You can't have it both ways."