Mr. Keen begins: So what, exactly, is Web 2.0? Mainstream media’s traditional audience has become Web 2.0’s empowered author. Web 2.0 is YouTube, the blogosphere, Wikipedia, MySpace or Facebook. Web 2.0 is YOU! Is Web 2.0 a dream or a nightmare? Silicon Valley, of course, interprets Web 2.0 as Disney rather than Kafka. The people have finally spoken. A flattened media is a personalized, chaotic media without that the essential epistemological anchor of truth. Web 2.0’s democratization of information and entertainment is creating a generation of media illiterates. The Web is a problem. The Web isn’t Cinderella facing Gregor “The Cockroach” Samsa in a deathmatch. Despite Time — which, as a pillar of the mainstream press is of course free of the hyperbole so common on the Web — the Web isn’t even You. Your wildly unflattering picture of life on the Web could also be painted of life before the Web. People chatter endlessly. It’s the Web.
We also agree that the Web is a problem. Compare that to the previous generation of media. The Web is abundance, while the old media are premised — in their model of knowledge as well as in their economics — on scarcity.
The old media are available on line. Mr. Keen: I agree that the Web is us. It’s a mirror rather than a medium. As he argues in his book, Web 2.0 transforms us into monkeys. 
Traditional media has done a good job in discovering, polishing and distributing that talent. Are you convinced that Web 2.0 is of benefit to traditional intellectuals like yourself? Talent is not either/or. We will lose some talent. Any medium which brings experts and professional authorities together is healthy. It’s the monkey chorus on the democratized web that bother me. Web 2.0’s distintermediated media unstitches the ecosystem that has historically nurtured talent. Web 2.0 misunderstands and romanticizes talent.
The mainstream media’s business model does not aim at nurturing talent. Talent isn’t engineered. The question, therefore, is not whether the traditional media’s taste is better or worse than the Web’s. The Web doesn’t have taste, good or bad. The Web is not an institution, a business, or even a market, any more than the real world is. The Web is only a web because we’re building links that say “Here’s something worth your time, and here’s why.”
Very few make a living through the traditional media.
Lots of creative people are making money on the Web, including traditional, edited, gate-kept media.
It may well be that the Web results in fewer mega-stars. The Web is actually additive for most creators.
This, to borrow your language, is what “matters” in the world of Web 2.0:
Question 1: Do you believe that the Web is “Ours”?
