The Brian Lehrer Show

Why the Internet is Bad for Us

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

It seems like everyone loves the internet, but one former technology entrepreneur thinks it’s destructive. Self-described web contrarian Andrew Keen rails against blogs, wikis and web 2.0 in his new book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture. We ask him why. Also, excerpts and analysis from the latest Republican presidential debate and a Harvard economist explains how New York businesses survive.

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Republican Debate

John Fund, columnist at the Wall Street Journal and author, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter, 2004), analyzes the third Republican presidential debate, then Dan Coats, former senator from Indiana and surrogate for the McCain presidential campaign, Congressman Buck McKeon (R-CA), representing Mitt Romney, and former Congresswoman Susan Molinari (R-SI), a senior advisor to the Giuliani campaign, assess their candidates' performances. Finally, Republican listeners tell us which candidate they are leaning towards.

Listen to the debate.

Rep. McKeon's website

Why the Internet is Bad for Us

Andrew Keen, former Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of the new book The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture (Currency, 2007), says blogs, wikis and other web 2.0 phenomena do more harm than good.

The Cult of the Amateur is available for purchase at Amazon.com.

Andrew Keen's blog
Keen's essay in The Weekly Standard

How Businesses Make it in New York

Harvard economist Edward Glaeser and writer Arianne Cohen analyzed how diners, drug dealers, copy shops, and other businesses manage to survive and thrive in NYC in their article "The Profit Calculator" in this week's New York Magazine. They discuss how "Newyorkonomics" makes it possible.