Monkeys With Typewriters

OK, so for those of you who missed my read & lead, I found these two little videos apropos of the topic from Keen:

The above is short and funny. This next is a little more what this post is about:

Now, the video is talking about monkeys on typewriters from the perspective of proving if there is a god. However, that is not the point for this post. The point is about Keen's fear that democratization of the web will lead to, basically, a bunch of shit on the internet, produced by a bunch of idiots who only appreciate the crap from other morons, until there is nothing but fecal matter to be found online.

I admit: I am inclined to agree with him. To a point. However, the internet has also been a very useful tool, in my experience. And, he was writing in 2006. Have things necessarily panned out the way he predicted? It wouldn't seem so.

The video, in relation to Keen's theory, is a pretty good refutation OR acceptance. It could accept Keen's theory if you believe that there are a bunch of people (monkeys) on typewriters spewing a bunch of crap that makes its way to the internet, and nothing important (twaddle, though perhaps not downright incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo) is being said. Yep. I'll admit: there is a lot of inane crap to be found online.

However, it could also be a good way to refute Keen's idea. If infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters can NOT produce anything that even remotely resembles a sonnet, then there is no way for "monkeys" (read: idiots) to truly take over the internet. There are still intelligent people out there producing content. A sonnet still needs an intelligent author. There are still academicians and an educated minority in our society. And it appears that more people than Keen would have supposed are savvy enough to distinguish shit from Shineola.

The nature of gatekeepers has simply seemed to change. There are still the authorities. An article posted by the Mayo Clinic will be taken more seriously than JoeSchmoe's posting about his arthritis. All this being said...I still see Keen's point. It's pretty sad that you can just as easily (if not more so) find information about the latest Justin Bieber gossip as you can the latest update on Iraq...and not everyone has--or wants--critical thinking skills. That's what scares me half to death...