Nice to meet you ZDNet!

Hello ZDNet readers -- nice to meet you all!

My name is Andrew Keen and, beginning from today, I'll be trying to seduce you with my ideas. Who am I? I'm a traditionalist -- a old-fashioned kind of content guy. I love physical books, movies, newspapers and music. I care about readers & writers, musicians and listeners, movie makers and movie watchers, journalists and consumers of news. For me, information technology is purely a vehicle for the distribution and consumption of culture and media. I'm neither a geek nor a nerd and I don't value computers or software for anything other than watching, reading or listening to content. So I'll be writing on ZDNet about the ways that technology is revolutionizing and, unfortunately, often impoverishing mainstream media and traditional culture.

Earlier this week, Dan Farber introduced me to the ZDNet audience as the author of THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR, my forthcoming critique of Web 2.0 (to be published June 5), which he generously described as "engaging", "controversial" and "provocative"  (at least I've managed to seduce him). As Dan said, my book is a full scale critique of blogging and social media which doesn't pull any punches. 

So, as a violent critic of the blogosphere, what am I doing "blogging" on ZDNet? 

It all depends, of course, what you mean by "blogging". You say "blog", I say "column"; you call me a "blogger", I define myself as a "columnist". The beauty of writing on this meritocratic forum is that it isn't like the radically democratic blogosphere in which everyone's voice is equal and nobody has anything to say. ZDNet is a healthy compromise between stodgy mainstream media and the flattened anarchy of the web.  I'm thrilled to be included in ZDNet's stable of a few dozen experts who know what they are talking about.

Having just implied that I've got something to say, I guess I'd better start saying it.  You won't always agree with me, but I hope you'll find my writing fun. Let the great seduction begin.