Column Boy oh boy! - has Andrew Keen upset the world of Web 2.0. I'm tempted to tell him: "Things change. Deal with it." but instead, I'm going to suggest you watch a talking rabbit discuss the end of the world and American culture.

Because he does have a point: the whole Web 2.0 crusade is based on the assumption that "reality" TV can somehow be better than carefully made programmes, or that the scalp-itchings of 10,000 ignorant (deliberately ignorant) fantasists are somehow a substitute for careful journalism.

The rabbits' argument is between this week's guru, Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur - who doesn't like the Long Tail - and blogger Robert Scoble, who is one of the longer joints of the Long Tail. (The rabbits, as far as I can tell, are bit-part actors whose last speaking role was as the Mice in the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I think they should go back to non-speaking parts, myself. Even if they don't either of them have a long tail).

Long Tails are niche markets. Niche markets, according to Chris Anderson are great, exciting democratising. Keen, however, thinks they're evil, and reduce culture to its highest common factor*.

My problem with Keen, is simple enough: he's a typical long-tail writer himself.

His own description of a long-tail writer (otherwise called a "blogger") is just a member of a horde of talentless monkeys. Proper writers (he suggests) learn their trade: "There is a scarcity of talent, expertise, experience and mastery in any given field. Thomas Friedman the New York Times Columnist, and Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent of the Independent newspaper, for example, didn't hatch from some obscure blog - they acquired their in-depth knowledge of the Middle East by spending their years in the region.... nurturing talent requires work, capital, expertise, investment. It requires the complex infrastructure of traditional media."

There's no money in blogging. Also, says Keen, we're losing all our best talents, and not only that, but our morals, our industry, and our culture. "Our" culture appears to be American culture, but Keen is actually a North London lad, and has a mid-Atlantic perspective despite his new home in Silicon Valley.

So why is Stanford law professor Larry Lessig so utterly pissed off with Keen?

"Keen is our generation’s greatest self-parodist. His book is not a criticism of the Internet. Like the article in Nature comparing Wikipedia and Britannica, the real argument of Keen’s book is that traditional media and publishing is just as bad as the worst of the Internet. Here’s a book — Keen’s — that has passed through all the rigour of modern American publishing, yet which is perhaps as reliable as your average blog post: no doubt interesting, sometimes well written, lots of times ridiculously over the top — but also riddled with errors."

That's the problem, isn't it? Lessig's comment is particularly nasty because he disguises it as gentle humour, but he's spot on. Keen's book is not the output of a trained, experienced journalist:

"Keen’s obvious point is to show those with a blind faith in the traditional system that it can be just as bad as the worst of the Internet. Indeed, one might say even worse, since the Internet doesn’t primp itself with the pretense that its words are promised to be true."

Ouch. And after a final dig:

"So lighten up on poor Mr. Keen, folks. He is an ally. His work will help us all understand the limits in accuracy, taste, judgment, and understanding shot through all of our systems of knowledge. The lesson he teaches is one we should all learn — to read and think critically, whether reading the product of the “monkeys” (as Keen likens contributors to the Internet to be) or books published by presses such as Doubleday,"

...Lessig goes on to list - meticulously - some of the simple errors of copy-and-paste which Keen has committed.

I'd suggest spending the thirteen odd quid that Doubleday will charge you for this book, because - in between all these typical "amateur" errors, I think Keen has a point.

He told me: "Throughout this book, I've been replying to Chris Anderson's Long Tail. I don't mind if people see me as hypocritical or even, if they think I'm not well informed. I didn't write this book for people in Silicon Valley. I'm trying to bring things together in a way that ordinary people will understand - real people. And I think the Web 2.0 thing is being described the way it isn't."

Facts: the Internet is changing the laws of society, and one of those laws is the law on copyright.

I sympathise with Keen on this. In the days before the Internet, my writing was strictly controlled by copyright, and PC Magazine paid me a salary which reflected the Editor's determination to ensure that the only way you could read my stuff was by buying PC Mag.

These days, I struggle to earn a fifth of what Ziff-Davis paid me. OK, they paid me a lot! - I think I was easily the best-paid tech journo in the UK in those days, but even so, the reality is that copyright law has melted the way the icebergs of Greenland are melting. The only thing keeping traditional meeja afloat is inertia.

But (I asked Keen) isn't this a bit like a forest, in which a huge fire has raged? - yes, much that was of value is destroyed; and in its place, there's an amorphous two-foot growth of shrubbery. But (I argued) that doesn't mean that it will still be an unimpressive two-foot high shrubbery in 50 years; by then, some of the green shoots will turn out to be 100-foot cedars, redwoods, pines. And others will be lost in their shade.

Yes, he said, that's possible. "I hope it will happen, but I don't feel it will."

In other words, the actual value of well-researched, expert writing; of trained, experienced musicianship, or of informed, science-based experimental papers, is lost for ever?

I don't think so.

I think that the problem facing traditional meeja - TV, newspapers, radio - is that they became complacent about all the things they did wrong. They - no, we - controlled access to sources. A well-informed, thoughtful individual who didn't know my phone number, or whose opinions I disagreed with, simply didn't make it into my columns, in those days.

These days I may regard people like Alasdair Phillips as mis-informed, or misguided... but he has his own platform, and if what he says about WiFi and radio "radiation dangers" resonates with people, he'll get exposure.

OK, so it's not that clear-cut - I've always tried to give the "oxygen of publicity" to my opponents, on the grounds that they would expose their ignorance better and faster if fresh air circulated amongst their ideas, than if they could wear a cloak labelled "martyr" and I'm sure I wasn't the only trained journalist to work that way. But things have changed, and yes: there's pitifully little money in writing what I did 10 years ago.

But in another ten years? I suspect that the power of Google to harvest cash from advertising is a trivial fraction of what it will eventually become.

Keen is pretty good on the down side. He points out (for example) that Guy Kawasaki, original Mac evangelist and writer of one of the world's top 50 blogs, got 2.5 million "hits" in 2006, and Google paid him a trivial $3,350.00 for the advertising value of this. And that's the good news today.

But what about tomorrow? I watch CNet and I watch The Register, and I watch Salon; a host of gadget sites like Engadget and Gizmodo and Pocket Lint, all making real money for their founders. And guess what! - all these founders are not Web 2.0 long-tailer trash. They're experts, experienced journalists, publishers who spotted that simple rule: when the rules change, play the new game.

Andrew Keen was bruised by his early pioneering Internet ventures, back in the 90s. He spotted the new rules, but the audience for the game in those days wasn't big enough. That doesn't mean it will stay small. His analysis of the collapse of the CD music business is simply, wrong. It's not entirely due to piracy (though that comes into it) but also due to the fact that real music lovers don't just want a formulaic "hit" created by a cynical monopoly music publisher.

In the end, the "water cooler effect" means that people indulge in culture in order to discuss what is interesting. If there are only 10,000 people in the world who like a particular form of music, they can (today) gather around that particular water cooler and chat about it. Yes, that means fewer sales for OutKast and Norah Jones perhaps. But it doesn't mean that OutKast and Norah Jones are, necessarily, the superior product, or that there's no cultural value to the minority niche.

Keen's quite right to point to the horrors of Internet gambling and addiction to gaming, porn and other pernicious evils. Society will want to deal with those issues and frankly, I doubt that passing laws will be effective in achieving a resolution. I foresee tears.

In the end, though, a new forest will grow up. There will be centres of excellence in Web 2.0, and people will sit in the shade of spreading chestnut trees, and they will sit on humble grass patches to do so. Excellence will attract devotees, and time will winnow out much of the chaff.

"I hope you're right," said Keen, dubiously. "It's possible, but it's not what I see." Well, when he's done his apprenticeship in journalism, we'll see what he sees. I'm betting he'll learn!

* Yes, I do mean HCF, highest common factor. A lowest common denominator is a far, far bigger number than an HCF. If you have two people, you can probably find 100 things they have in common. If you assume they have 200 interests each, the lowest common denominator would be wonderful, in meeja terms: it would give you as many as 400 things to focus on. Instead, the HCF goes rapidly down as you add people, and by the time you have 200 people, your HCF is going to include nothing except porn and celebrity. Probably, something like Celebrity Big Brother, with Rula and an MP pretending to kiss on screen...

Yuck. ®