Andrew Keen challenges NIST Students to think about how they use the Internet

On Tuesday 11 January, 2011, Andrew Keen, a British-American entrepreneur and the author of the book, “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy”, gave NIST Year 5-10 students a thought-provoking talk on the topic of the Internet and culture.

Mr Keen’s audience of ‘digital natives’ who have constant access to the Internet were asked to think about their activities while surfing the Internet. During his talk, Mr. Keen argued that with the free flow of content and information online, ‘the culture of free’ and ‘the cult of amateur’ were developed allowing people to steal and behave in a way they would not in the real world. To offer solutions, he proposed that internet users must have “respect for intellectual property, develop a sense of responsibility and recognize that the internet is not a place just to take but also to give”.

Mr Keen’s provocative argument that our current behaviour may debase culture provoked students. As a result, we witnessed fruitful discussion between him and our students. Clearly, Andrew Keen challenged our students to think about the Internet and how the medium is used.

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