Keen On America

Pity the novelist. In a year which brought us the unbelievable non-fiction of a second Trump victory and the establishment of Luigi Mangione as an American folk hero, what can novelists do to stretch our imagination? But according to the LA Times literary critic, Bethanne Patrick, novelists do, indeed, still have something to tell us. And to make her case, she discusses her five favorite works of fiction of 2024 from masterful novelists like Percival Everett, Yael van der Wouden and Danzy Senna.

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Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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For all the hysteria about misinformation and disinformation, maybe we prefer ignorance. That’s the intriguing thesis of the illustrious Columbia University intellectual historian, Mark Lilla, in his new book, Ignorance is Bliss. It all begins, of course, inside Plato’s cave in his Republic, that metaphorical preface to Western thought where we are subjected to illusionary shadows and delusional reflections. And, for Lilla at least, it may end in the America of late 2024, where many of us appear to relish being back in Plato’s cave, staring - sometimes even perhaps knowingly - at illusionary shadows and delusional reflections. So if ignorance is bliss, then what, exactly, is knowledge?

Mark Lilla is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and other publications worldwide. His books include The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics; The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction; The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West; and The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics. He lives in New York City.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It’s been coming a while. But now it’s official. Keith Teare has declared his love for Elon Musk. In this week’s THAT WAS THE WEEK newsletter, suitably entitled “I’m With Musk”, Keith argues that without Musk “I have no idea what a positive narrative about modernization and growth would be.” America, Keith argues, needs “builders” like Musk who will enable “a real conversation about change”. I’m more ambivalent, but then Ambivalence is my middle name. While I agree with Keith that Musk has been childishly vilified by progressives, I disagree with his Randian argument that innovators are naturally progressive because they claim to want to improve the general lot of humanity. In tech, there are right-wing (Musk, Sacks, Thiel &Andreessen) and left-wing (Moskovitz, Hoffman & Moritz) builders. Some builders are better than others. I know which I prefer.

Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

On May 24, 2022, a 18 year-old walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and shot to death 19 students and 2 teachers. In Uvalde’s Darkest Hour, the owner of the local Uvalde Leader-News, Craig Garnett tries to make sense of these tragic events. Although making sense might be the wrong words to describe either the book or Garnett himself. While this mass murder occurred more than two years ago, the stoical Garnett still appears frozen in a kind of uncomprehending grief in the face of this terrible crime. As he confesses, the writing of the book was intended as a kind of catharsis. But there’s still an intense anger there - especially toward the local police chiefs who allowed the gunman to remain in the classroom for an hour and fourteen minutes.

CRAIG GARNETT has owned the Uvalde Leader-News, the local newspaper, since 1989. He moved to Uvalde in 1982 to begin work with the Leader-News, where his weekly editorials and columns have won dozens of awards from the Texas Press Association and South Texas Press Association. Garnett received the 2023 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity, and tenacity in rural journalism for his coverage of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

While many of us fear a future in which all our online interactions are with algorithms, the young Florida based programming prodigy, Michael Sayman, actually looks forward to this brave new world. In fact, earlier this year he started a controversial social media app called SocialAI which exclusively feature bots responding to its human users. For Sayman, our ubiquitous interaction with smart machines is the inevitable future of the internet and so we should embrace it. It’s a generational thing, Sayman believes. Old people, he argues, are still clinging to so me nostalgic version of “humanity”, whereas people of his generation, who grew up online, understand that AI is just media - no different from books, movies, video games or music.

Teen entrepreneur, programmer, and student MICHAEL SAYMAN created an iOS app development company at thirteen, after teaching himself to code. Since then, he has gone on to create dozens of apps, which have been downloaded more than 3 million times worldwide.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Yesterday, we featured a conversation with Jonathan Taplin about the dearth of high quality contemporary music and movies. The music writer, David Rowell, agrees with Taplin, but goes one step further, suggesting that we no longer even like new music. In his new book, The Endless Refrain, Rowell the rise of music streaming and the consolidation of digital platforms has so decimated the musical landscape that all we want to listen to now are the old hits of our youth. New music then, for Rowell, is being destroyed by new technology. The internet has frozen culture into a nostalgic mixtape of greatest hits.

David Rowell grew up in North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For nearly 25 years he was an editor at The Washington Post Magazine and has taught literary journalism in the MFA department at American University. He is currently a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. His books include the novel The Train of Small Mercies, Wherever the Sound Takes You: Heroics and Heartbreak in Music Making and The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music. He lives with his wife just outside of Chapel Hill.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A few months ago, I interviewed David Leonhardt, author of Ours Was the Shining Future, about the death of the American dream which, he argued, can be dated from on 5 June 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. And it’s on that infamous date that I begun my conversation with Jonathan Taplin about the rebirth of the American dream. According to the Los Angeles based Taplin, who is now working on a book about an upcoming renaissance of American culture, the vehicle for a revitalized United States will come from a Sixties style explosion of cultural vitality. Bright new music, film and books will create a bright new America, Taplin predicts. I hope he’s right.

Jonathan Taplin is a writer, film producer and scholar. He is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and was a Professor at the USC Annenberg School from 2003-2016 in the field of international communication management and digital media entertainment. Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 as Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese's first feature film, Mean Streets, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for PBS) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe awards and chosen for The Cannes Film Festival five times. In 1984 Taplin acted as the investment advisor to the Bass Brothers in their successful attempt to save Walt Disney Studios from a corporate raid. This experience brought him to Merrill Lynch, where he served as vice president of media mergers and acquisitions. In this role, he helped re-engineer the media landscape on transactions such as the leveraged buyout of Viacom. Taplin was a founder of Intertainer and has served as its Chairman and CEO since June 1996. Intertainer was the pioneer video-on-demand company for both cable and broadband Internet markets. Taplin holds two patents for video on demand technologies. Professor Taplin has provided consulting services on Broadband technology to the President of Portugal and the Parliament of the Spanish state of Catalonia and the Government of Singapore. Mr. Taplin graduated from Princeton University. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the Author’s Guild Council and the Board of the American Music Association. Mr. Taplin was appointed to the California Broadband Task Force and the City of Los Angles Technology and Innovation Council. He was named one of the 50 most social media savvy professors in America by Online College and one of the 100 American Digerati by Deloitte’s Edge Institute.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

On the week that the price of Bitcoin rose above $100,000 and Trump appointed David Sacks as his “AI and Crypto Czar”, has Silicon Valley finally succeeded in conquering Washington DC? In today’s That Was The Week summary of tech news, Keith Teare and Andrew review what appears to be a tectonic shift in power between Silicon Valley and Washington DC. Are “right-wing” Trump supporters like Sacks, Elon Musk and Mark Andreessen being invited to Washington by the MAGA movement to ransack the Federal bureaucracy? Or is this that grand historical moment when the real powers-that-be emerge from behind the curtain and impose their own digital neo-liberal regime in DC?

Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Yesterday, we featured a conversation with Mozilla co-founder and Internet Hall of Famer, Mitchell Baker, one of the great champions of an open web. Today’s guest, the prolific writer and journalist Jeff Jarvis, is another leading defender of the internet. In his new book, The Web We Weave, Jarvis explains how we can reclaim the internet from moguls, misanthropes and moral panics. The Web, Jarvis argues, is a mirror of all the best and worst aspects of society. It’s us. So only we can reclaim the internet from the Musks, the bots and the moral hysteria now threatening to destroy it.

Jeff Jarvis is the author of six books, including currently "The Web We Weave," "The Gutenberg Parenthesis," and "Magazine." He cohosts the podcasts "This Week in Google" and "AI Inside" and blogs at Buzzmachine. Jarvis is the Tow Professor of Journalism Innovation Emeritus at CUNY's Newmark School of Journalism. In a long career as a journalist, he was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly, president and creative director of Advance Net (online arm of Condé Nast and Advance Local), and TV critic of TV Guide and People.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Few people deserve their place in the Internet Hall of Fame than Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker. Since co-founding the Mozilla Project in the late Nineties, Baker has been one of the most consistent and articulate champions of an open internet. So looking back over the last quarter century, what does Baker make of the history of online freedom? And is she hopeful that new technologies like AI can regenerate the promise of an open internet?

Mitchell Baker co-founded the Mozilla Project to support the open, innovative web and ensure it continues offering opportunities for everyone. As Chairwoman of Mozilla, Mitchell Baker is responsible for organizing and motivating a massive, worldwide, collective of employees and volunteers around the world who are building the internet as a global public resource, open and accessible to all. Mitchell is deeply engaged in developing product offerings that promote the mission of empowering individuals. She also guides the overall scope and direction of Mozilla’s mission. Mitchell has written the key documents that set out Mozilla’s enduring mission and commitments — the Mozilla Public license in 1998, the Mozilla Manifesto in 2007 and the Mozilla Manifesto Addendum — also known as the Pledge for a Healthy Internet — in 2018. Mitchell is a strong advocate for the open internet, open source, and the importance of connecting technology to its impact on individuals and society. She is highly regarded as one of the pioneers of the web and bringing the open internet to consumers. Mitchell is an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate with the Open Agriculture Initiative. She co-chaired the U.S. Department of Commerce Digital Economy Board of Advisors from its inception in March 2016 until August 2017, served on the United Nations High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, and the ICANN High Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.