1. The democratized media traditionally is argued to be beneficial- making media more efficient and more truthful. That doing away with the middle-man is a positive subtraction giving the original publisher more credit. However, Keen argues to defend mainstream media and that it has recently become a "punching bag" for libertarians on the left and right, or people who he describes as having no respect for authority. This new democratized media caters to those people and allows them to be publishers, and artists without any skills or training. Digg.com and Rediff.com are two examples he mentions of democratized media where many of the work published doesn't go through a middle man, and therefore doesn't have much of a filter. He says that we don't have the ideal economy for this to happen and that we need the middle men, or the experts. Keen also brings up that the core of the media is being able to find and advertise human talent, and that the only way of finding other human talent, is with human talent. In addition to the unfiltered media that is now being published, it is also corrupting our society because we are easily impressionable by these anonymous people. If we are to be influenced by something it should be something that is trustworthy.
2. Keen's take on social media is much more negative than Rushkoff's. In Digital Nation, there were many flaws pointed out by social media, including that growing up in a world where we are constantly multi-tasking isn't actually helping anybody because we just become metiocre at many things instead of mastering many concepts. However, Rushkoff also pointed out what he believed to be benefits of this new media, that many schools are benefiting from the technology, such as the public school in the Bronx. Also how games like Second Life and World of War Craft are connecting people all around the world. As I previously stated about Keen's view he really just thinks that what is being published isn't reliable and that we are missing the talent in the media. I definitely agree more with Keen. I think that Rushkoff did a good job of documenting different views of the positive and negative effects of this democratized media, but that even what he stated as positive I saw as negative. The fact that children can't learn traditionally, and that they need technological gadgets to succeed is concerning. What is even more concerning is that people are calling other gamers their "closest friends" without even spending time with them in real life. I find it both sad and pathetic that somebody has to buy a game, and spend an inhuman amount of time playing it to find their friends. Furthermore, Keen's point that we can't find real talent anymore is especially frightening. Sure, the democratized media allows everybody to have a say which sometimes results in finding new talent, but there is also an insanely large amount of useless information that people are putting on the internet. And anybody with a mind shouldn't listen to what they have to say because they're not specialized to share that work with the entire internet world. In short, the democratized media is just letting people record, publish, or ramble on about something they probably don't know much about.
