Keen: Opinion and Chaos, a Cachophany of Amateurs

In Tulsa, we have a chain of convenience stores called QuikTrip.  In my opinion as a habitue of convenience stores, QuikTrip is indeed the ne plus ultra of the genre. I admit that Lacey, a diminutive red-shirted teenager with heavy black eye make up and a talent for cleaning and refreshing the expansive coffee station, plays a large part in my decision.

Pleae remember Lacey while I meander, because now I'm going to talk about Andrew Keen and his tightly constructed but ultimately foolish premise in The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture.  Because he irritated me on NPR yesterday morning before I had my coffee (ah, Lacey, how I miss you weekend mornings), I may even make fun of his pretentious accent.  

To the best that I can boil down Keen's "deeply controversial" argument, it goes something like this: the groundlings have no business on the stage.  He argues that Web 2.0 (YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Google, etc.), file sharing and blogging are responsible for killing the independant bookstore and the music business.  He is an authority, apparently, because he

....was a member of that generation of Silicon Valley visionaries who pioneered the Internet. He founded Audiocafe.com in 1995 and established it as one of the most highly trafficked websites of the late Nineties.

So, pre-coffee I'm lying in bed yesterday morning when I hear Keen's buttery Brit voice,

...it fundamentally undermines the authority of mainstream media.  I'm seeing two things going on simultaneously:  the rise of this user generated content which is unrealiable and often corrupt, and a crisis in professional journalism, professional recorded music, newspapers, radio stations, television and publishing. And that is the core of our culture.  Once we undermine the authority and expertise and professionalism of mainstream media all we have is opinion and chaos, a cachophany of amateurs.

Now, I've given a good bit of thought to this myself.  And as I am a marketing professional, I think I'll just chime in here.  In my opinion as a professional, paid a good wage to have opinions about things like this, Keen, like the record companies, like Joe Klien, like AT&T has had a moment of confusion.  The confusion stems from mistaking the business model for the need.  It comes from assuming the model will hold up under disruptive technology.  It comes from assuming the world owes you a living.

Let's all stipulate for the moment that money makes the world go around.  Let's further stipulate that as the world is going around, we're all trying to extract our nickel or two.  In it's simplest terms, we uncover a need and monetize the means to meet that need.

QuikTrip monetizes my need for caffiene by having Lacey keep the place spotless, having multiple locations on my way to work, keeping the time to pour, cap, stand in line and check out to 90 seconds and never making me wait for a parking space.  I could have free coffee at work, but they give me $1.18 in value 2-3 mornings a week, so I pay them $1.18 two to three mornings a week. This is now my habit.

The way we turn a need into money is a business model.  Successful business models turn transactions into habits.  We want music, we go to the store and buy the album (I date myself).  Pretty soon, everyone believes that the habit is an obligation.  Since I have always gone to the record store, and paid a certain amount for a collection of songs first on a vinal format, then on a CD, I must continue to do so.  After all, they have accomodated my need for music by building record stores.  They have created posters and booked bands on the late night show and sold things through ticketmaster.  Until somehow we have a societal compact that they are the professional purveyors of music and I'm the amateur listener.  But as they get more efficient in packaging this music, they edit out the stuff I like and I can't find it anymore.  They charge more than I'm willing to pay.  They groom teenybopper bands that do nothing for me.

They dump one of my favorite SF authors because her books don't make the magic number, so she has to write under another name and it takes me three years to find her.  Wait, did I change topics?  Let me see. No, it's pretty much the same thing.

So, I have a need for information and for decades that need was met by the newspaper.  I was even a "paper boy" in my youth and the $75 a month I made at 12 made me rich beyond my wildest imaginings.  I spent a few years as a television news producer happily ripping wire off pegs, drinking the information in, reveling in it.  But need met disruptive technology.  First we got computers in the newsroom and got rid of the wire machines.  Then I found NY Times online and read the wires there.  Then I found CEO online and Slate and Salon.  Each time I changed my habit, it was because someone offered me something that met the need better.  I cancelled the paper, and with it the irritating local conservative bloviating on the opinion page.  But I missed Ann Landers and Dear Abby, so now I read Cary Tennis and Dear Prudence and (not work safe) Savage Love.  And the part I love best is when they answer the same letters, as happens occasionally.

The television news business started leaving me behind when it collectively did things like cut the news staff to make it more efficient and hire increasingly attractive types to read the stories.  I believe we can all agree that Katie Couric is no Walter Cronkite.  Internally, they adopted slogans like "do more with less" and make an operation staffed for three 14 minute news holes strain to fill hours morning, noon and night.  None of these professionals had time for thoughtfulness anymore. There bosses found economic incentive to chip at the wall between news and promotion until I'm never sure what's a video news release packaged by a PR firm, and what's real.

And then the pundits started talking up a war that I was convinced to my toes would not go well. About which I was held up for ridicule (gentle as it was) at work.  So I start looking for someone who seems to have a clue. And I wade through endless exclamations of "Fitz" and "Clean Sheets," because I'm so effing desperate to hear something I could possibly believe, to find some community I can possible join.  Meanwhile I order the new Vienna Teng album directly from the label because I know she'll get a bigger cut.

Keen, who was there at the beginning of the technology change, seems to be missing the point.  Independant bookstores and newspapers and radio stations and pundits are not the victims of Web 2.0.  They are victims of the collective disgruntlement of a large number of folks whose needs were not being met, and who, when disruptive technology occured, were willing to wade into the new waters despite their attendant inconveniences and downsides.  Even in alpha, even in beta, even with pie fights and metadiscussions about who troll rated whom and why, separating the wheat from the chaff in the new media fills the need better than the old business model ever did.  We don't change our habits unless our needs can be better met elsewhere.  Bitter coffee at work worked for a long time.

I was not an early adopter of coffee at QuikTrip.  I never carry cash.  I have kids and they were as efficient at releaving me of it as one might expect.  I got to know Lacey when QT started accepting credit card transactions for micropayments without requiring me to sign the receipt.

What Keen and his kind appear to be desperate never to understand is that it takes a while for the bugs to shake out in the new business model.  It takes time for the early adopters to work out the kinks.  When it happens, the old model crumbles  -- it's just the product lifecycle, baby.  Whining about the model change is useless.  You have to adapt or go the way of the telegram.  

After all, just a couple of generations ago, there was no QuikTrip, just mom and pop corner stores with pickle barrels and penny candies.  The sheet music vendors were bemoaning the advent of the phonograph.  Vaudeville was dying.  ARPANET and the tubes were the stuff of dreams and visionary fiction.  As far as I can see, our needs were the same -- only the technology changed.  And Lacey, of course.