Andrew Keen's "Solutions"

I found Andrew Keen's article "Solutions," to be a much more enjoyable and agreeable read than his original article. In "Solutions" Keen recognizes that the internet and it's functions are an unescapeable part of our society, and it's not going anywhere any time soon. His ideas to fix the Web would make it better, and reverse amateurism and the home-grown movement to enrich and enhance, rather than hold us back. I thought what Keen proposed we do to fight amateurism and false identity problems was a little unrealistic, and would take a lot of work on every persons part to make it work.

His first solution is something he calls "Citizendium." The idea of Citizendium is to create a site where only experts and masters of certain feilds can review and edit information for others to see. Because experts in certain feilds do have more knowledge about the topics than the everyday person, it would make sense that they would have the power to do that, and thus, enrich and enhance the validity of the information. The only problem I could forsee with this is how you could decifer the experts from fakers. False identity is a huge problem when it comes to the web and it would make it extremely difficult to find a way to screen the site so only real experts would be able to edit it. Otherwise, it would end up just being another wikipedia.

Keens obsession with spreading music so it "pours from every orfice in the world" was probably his inspiration for his idea of iamplify. Again, it would take the work of every person and the idea that people are doing the "right" thing to make an idea like this work. iAmplify wouldn't become successful because there are so many other places on the Web to access that type music. Maybe it would be helpful for musicians to get there music out there, but I don't think it would ever catch on.

Overall I thought Keen's ideas were a little to idealistic for the kind of world we live in. People aren't going to want to change anything about the web, though I do agree that it would be better if we were to change it.