In the book titled, “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture”, the author Andrew Keen, discusses how the saturation of the internet with, what he terms amateur content, has lead to a degradation of our culture. Keen presents his argument through the metaphor of the “infinite monkey theorem” which states that “if you provide infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters, some monkey somewhere will eventually create a masterpiece-a play by Shakespeare, a Platonic dialogue, or an economic treatise by Adam Smith.”  Keen takes this theory and applies it to the present day internet, in which the monkeys are Internet users and the typewriters are our computers.

The implications of Keens argument are intriguing.  Some, including myself, have always believed that the internet is a medium by which creativity and originality can flourish.  Because it is so accessible, the ease with which one can present a new idea if significantly increased.  However, that being said, what if, as Keen suggests, those “new ideas” are not so constructive to the cultural and moral fabric of society.  Keen points to websites such as YouTube and Facebook as being web environments where cultural demoralizing ideas take root and expand.  Examples include “The Easter Bunny Hates You Video” which received three million views in a week, as well as videos of dancing stuffed monkeys.  Keen argues that these videos and ideas that are now pervading the Internet, are destroying the legitimacy of what he calls, the “collective intelligence”, or the sum wisdom of search engine and web users.  Essentially, at the core of the matter for Keen is that the internet is creating a generation in which truth and morality are extraneous terms.

In Keen’s TechCrunch TV site, the author conducts a series of interviews with numerous tech savvy individuals.  One such individual is Adam Lashinsky, author of “Inside Apple”.  During the interview in which Lashinsky discusses some of the inner most workings of Apple, he suggests that Apple’s corporate structure is suggestive of that of a terrorist cell in which members do not have a complete understanding of the “business plan” that is being professed by their company or cell.

This notion is connected to Keen’s book through the theme of a lack of understanding.  It seems to me that this corralling of what knowledge is granted to members within Apple is reflected in the users of the Internet as well.  Wikipedia is another example that Keen uses that suggests this continuous theme as well.  The fact that people are able alter any information on Wikipedia, even if its wrong information, suggests that this lack of concrete facts and truths is creating a sense of ignorance that is not only beginning to be represented in society, but which is already present in Apple’s hierarchy as well.