♪ >> this week on q&a our guest is andrew keen author of the internet is not the answer. objections to the over use of technology, the creation of what he calls false communities through social networking and other thoughts on whether the internet lives up to its own

is posed value. he also talks about the history of silicon valley the use of personal data by internet sites and what he thinks regular users of the web should now. c-span: where did you get this title, the internet is not the answer? >> guest: like most of my best ideas they did not come from me. the original title the original title, i can't say the exact word because this is a family show but epic fail. my american publisher did not like that tale because he thought it was too abstract. he had a long conversation with my agent. and he shouted, the internet is not the answer. there was there was silence and then i thought, that's a good title. c-span: i wanted to ask you the minute i read this book about the whole chapter. you talk about failing. what is that?

>> guest: i i am sure you have been up to silicon valley. very susceptible. the idea of failure. and of course the reality is the bigger success you are the more you post about failure. in one of the chapters i attended the conference. one of one of the speakers was vietnam called travis columbia. now the ceo of huber, the darling of silicon valley. in his speech he boasted about being sued by record labels for a quarter of a trillion dollars because he had a company which was essentially like napster. the aspects of silicon valley.

a very well-known publisher and make speeches like how i failed. of course the real truth about silicon valley as they are the winners. the real failures they don't boast about failure and go around saying am a failure. i think this cold of failure is one of the reasons why silicon valley is so profoundly out of touch with the rest of the world. as world. it's the one sector and the american economy that is doing well, the one sector driving innovation and change. when when you have a cult of failure it is particularly great. c-span: where did you grow up? >> guest: north london. c-span: what was your life like? >> middle class jewish north london for those of you use -- i don't know what

the equivalent would be in new york. middle and lower middle class neighborhood in new york. so my family where shopkeepers. my great-grandfather had come over from poland. ..

and i went to a place called the school of slavonic studies. i was a east europeanist. specialized in balkan history. before the collapse of the berlin wall. so particularly interested in the history of communism and the history of pre-communism. specialized in russia, history of germany and history of countries that then existed like yugoslavia czechoslovakia, which of course now is fragmented. after i greated from the school of slavonic studies in london, i was a british council scholar, which is equivalent of a fulbright scholarship in sarajevo in old yugoslavia which is bosnia. this is before the civil war and before the olympics. this was '82,' 83. i came to grad school at berkeley. i came as political scientist. i had fairly unique achievement coming as scholar and being thrown out as a troublemaker.

i have had my moments of failure too. cspan: what kind of trouble were you making? >> guest: made fun of stodgy academics, career academics that have too much to say for themselves. you know my work i am a little brutal. i try to tell the truth and what i see as the truth. american academia is so mired in tradition, in bureaucracy, it is so reactionary, whether from the left or from the right. you have got political correctness n england you're trained to sing to yourself. when i was a student in england, my professors, my teachers, expected me to argue with them. expected me to think for myself. when i came to berkeley it was a real cultural shock when you have these professors who expected you to agree with them. who expected you to toe the line. who expected you to read their boring articles and theories and then spew them back to them.

of course, perhaps rather immaturely i wasn't willing to do that and they weren't very happy. so i was thrown out. the pinnacle of my career at berkeley if one can call it a pinnacle, i had stodgy old austrian hungarian professor, hungarian. one day he had some visiting students from harvard. he particularly wanted graduate students to behave themselves. this was the period of ceausescu. he was this awful dictator in romania. i gave this rather entertaining presentation comparing ceausescu with vlad the impaler, medieval ruler of. this old crusty, bureaucratic hungarian professor never spoke to me again. that was my kiss of death. i didn't fit into academia, that is ironic, some people think i'm defender of old elite of

traditions but i like to think of myself in more rebellious terms. cspan: where do you live now? >> guest: i live in santa rosa, california. are you familiar with the movie "shadow of the doubt"? cspan: i don't think so. >> guest: great hitchcock movie made in 1943. it was about small town america. i was a big fan of hitchcock. i called it digital vertigo. i like living in innoncent america which isn't quite as innocent as it appears. cspan: will run a clip from the ted x speech you gave and eventually show something from vertigo. before we do this. we've got several exerts you -- excerpts. you gave the speech in 2012. what is tedx and what is it? >> guest: tedx is the franchise of ted. there are a couple of ted main

events. which are exclusive events for technological elite who like to think they are improving world. in order to improve the world they spend 6 or $7,000 each other to socialize for a weekend. anyone can buy into the ted brand and you can put on tedx event. they are very good. some are better than others. they're a lot less exclusive a lot less elitist than the main ted. i have done, i don't know which speech. cspan: this is brussels. >> guest: i've done brussels, budapest europe, holland. there are a lot of fun? have you ever been to one? cspan: no, i watch them online. do they pay you to do these? >> guest: they pay expenses but you get to meet interesting people. the one in brussels, if you show a clip of i spoke just before steve wozniak the cofounder of apple. he was very friendly afterwards.

he said my speech made him cry i don't know whether of laughter or sadness. certainly had impact. cspan: we'll watch a little bit. we have more than one clip and watch this and ask you more about it. >> guest: we are data. emerging as data. that is the thing steve wozniak for better or worse putting into motion. that is the industry most of us are involve in. and as we look at each other in the future, in the latter part of the 21st century we won't see question marks. we will see data. we will see information. and indeed, one company in silicon valley, you may have heard of it, it is called google. they're even designing glasses when you put on, you won't see these physical question marks. you will see data. bang bang. that is the corpse. that is the murder. cspan: bang bang, is song with nancy sinatra? >> guest: right. thats watt theme of the show.

bang-bang. so i couldn't resist using that. cspan: so what are you trying to do in a speech like this and who's the audience? >> guest: well the audience, that particular event which i think is the largest tedx in the world. it was in brussels downtown brussels. sort of 3,000 people in the audience. the tickets are relatively affordable maybe 100 is 50 euro. so the audience is made up of technologists, students. it is a good audience. i did one in budapest. it's a wonderful audience. everyone at tedx i think gets 60 minutes to speak. you're supposed to make it engaging. you're supposed to make it a memorable experience. cspan: is it scripted? >> guest: not at all. cspan: when we watch you, this is off the top of your head? >> guest: it is off the top of my head. the tedx people like to get people to prepare. they like practice.

but i never do it. they would get annoyed with me because i never show up to the practice because i think speeches when they're canned are worthless. i think they have to be spontaneous. i can only get motivated in front of people. i'm kind of person, my books are always late, my articles are late. i like this kind of experience because i can't put it off. so i can only really take something seriously if i'm in front of 3,000 people. because that forces you not to screw up. and, it is, it is a invigorating experience. i think for me, the live experience is excellent. i, i have been able to prosper in this economy because of that as a pure writer i think i would be struggling a lot more. and, while i don't necessarily celebrate that because i know many very fine writers, very fine thinkers struggle in front of a live audience, the real. real opportunity now in the

digital age ironically is the physical experience. what the digital has done is commodities the copy. it made it worthless. no one pays for anything online. what that ironically done make the physical appearance a lot more value. where events like ted the franchise are a lot more valuable where people go to events. the internet made us want to physically meet people more. which means we'll not disappear into the digital ether. there will always be a physical experience, to do well in this world, particularly as entertainer or thinker or writer, you have to be able to perform. you have to be able to entertain. cspan: in your talk, and we're going to see an excerpt of it set it up if you don't mind. the whole use of the vertigo clip. and where did you get the idea? you used this for a long time?

>> guest: the vertigo clip? cspan: of jimmy stewart and -- >> guest: well, for me i always had an obsession with hitchcock's vertigo. i think that is his major achievement. i remember seeing it, i'm always a huge movie person. i say it at every man in london. the new print came out. i saw it at the national theater. one of those attracts obsessives like me. there are some layers. every time you see it you peel another skin. of course for me, it was a wonderful opportunity to write about silicon valley because i've always thought of technology as the great seduction, as thing thaw fall in love with. you think you're falling in luff with one thing and you're actually falling in love with something quite different. "vertigo" is ultimate movie about falling in love with something that really doesn't exist. i'm sure most of your listeners and most of your viewers are familiar with the movie.

it's a film about a man who falls in love with a blonde who turns out to be brunette. who falls in love what he thinks is a blonde, beautiful san francisco heiress. and turns out to be a brunette from kansas who works as a shop girl. so it is all about that. cspan: let's watch it. >> guest: watch "vertigo" or my clip? cspan: watch this clip. starts with vertigo. >> guest: there she goes. he is already transfixed. he is in love. hasn't even met with her or talked with her. he is calling. the great slovenian philosopher talks about the view. that doorway. here she comes look at her kim novak, beautiful blonde american heiress from san francisco who drive as green jaguar around town. he has fallen in love, gone for her. what does "vertigo" have to do

with information and data? i fear the movie some of you may have really seen. the blonde really isn't a blonde. she is in fact a brunette "shopgirl" from kansas. all woman from kansas i think work in stores. and they're brunettes. and, he is about to be set up. he is about to be sucked into this vortex of hat break and murder. -- heart break. that is what we're here to talk about today. just as jimmy stewart got sold a false blonde we are being sold something also. which is a scam, something which is undermining who we have as a species. cspan: what's the scam? >> guest: the scam is, the the ideal of being able to self-publish online. the scam is facebook, instagram. the scam is twitter. and, you know i'm as easy to

seduce as anyone. so i'm on some of these things too. i'm not claiming not to be. the scam is the idea that these platforms give us the opportunity to realize ourselves, tell the world what we think what we see. to distribute our photography our music our movies our text. allows to us become online bloggers and photographers and videographers. but the scam is that we're being used. mike morris, the very brilliant silicon valley venture capitalist who invested in google and yahoo! and many of the other big hits describes this as the data factory economy. in the old day in the industrial aging people went to work in factories. they were paid for their labor. they worked 9:00 to 5:00 and went home and did what they want with that money. today we're all working in these factories like google like facebook, like twitter but we're unpaid labor. we're working 24 hours aday.

we're not rewarded. it is not acknowledged we're creating value for them. and worse than that we are the ones who are being packaged up as the product because of course what these companies are doing is learning more and more us from our behavior, from what we publish. from our photographs, from what we buy from what we say, from what we don't say. they're learning about us. they're creating this bentham like penomticon. they are prance transforming us, reactaging us as the product. we're the ones being sold. not only we're working for free but we're being sold. it is ultimate scam. it's a perfect hitchcock movie. cspan: who is bentham and what is pentipticon. >> guest: jeremy bentham was 19th century utilitarian philosopher. he invented this idea of a

penopticom. a prison which had a tower could see anyone. bentham believed the idea could be used in schools and hospitals. bentham believed this would create discipline in the new industrial society. the french historian and philosopher michelle foucault, has written extensively about bentham. interestingly enough bentham, inspired jon stewart mill, the great 19th century liberalism. he reacted against bentham and wrote a book beyond liberty. went beyond bentham what his pleasure principle and source in more complex terms. i love bentham. i don't mean i love bentham. i love the idea of bentham and bentham both his corpse and his ideas play a central role in the narrative of the digital vertigo. cspan: you mentioned twitter. i want to show you a list of the top 10 people in the united

states who have twitter followers and look at the numbers and just tell us what this means to you when you see it. we'll look at that bottom, wait, look at the first five. we've got katy perry, who has the most followers at 63 million. justin bieber, up near 59 million. barack obama at number three at, which is 52 million. taylor swift at 50. youtube, who don't think youtube is a person but they have 48 million followers. and at the bottom, lady gaga at 43, britney spears at -- >> guest: these are not the bottom. they are the next five. cspan: i mean the bottom of the 10. justin timberlake at 40 million rihanna at 389 and ellen degeneres at 37. what does that say to you? >> guest: what is says the internet has create ad world not of cultural democracy. it is not what thomas friedman calls, a flat world. it is actually as rocky as hilly

as mountainous as the old world. it created this infrastructure for a winner take-all cultural economy and as well as winner-take-all economic system which a tiny group of superstar entertainers are controlling our attention. there is a very brilliant business writer at harvard business school, anita elksberger i may have mispronounced her name. she wrote an important book, blockbuster. she compares the digital economy with old industrial economy. internet would democratize and sweep away old elites and hollywood studios. we have more of the same. it is even worse now. what we have is a system a tiny group of people control our attention. if that isn't bad enough, the other thing that is even worse consequence is that this economy is hollowing out the middle. the old entertainment economy it wasn't ideal i'm not

defending labels and studios that produce ad lot of garbage and they were corrupt and they supported certain kinds of elite. i don't deny any of that but what it did at least guaranty the infrastructure the ecosystem of a middle class economy. of gatekeepers of editors of people who would film shows like this. of journalists. of people who had regular middle class incomes. what the infer in the has done, it -- internet has done swept away that old class. none of these people have any role in the digital economy and it enabled a superstar class of reannas, lady gagas with 10 and 50 million followers and destroyed the old middle class. we all lose. this is lose -- lose, rather than classics silicon valley notion of win-win. cspan: as you saw on the list barack obama is third. only person on the list is politician.

the rest are entertainers. i want to show you a clip, he did a seven-minute video some time back the day before he went to iowa to make a speech about the internet. he did it in the oval office. i don't know if i've seen this. i want to show it, get you to comment because this president is using this kind of media all the time. >> one of the things that i'm growing to make an early announcement about this week is the issue of getting faster broadband. i want to take a look at something i've got here on my ipad. this is internet download speeds by city. i can zoom up if you want so you can see the names there. so you've got seoul, south korea, hong kong tokyo paris. these cities all have really fast access to the internet because they have made the investments in broadband. now here's what interesting. right next eo it, you have cedar

falls, iowa. cedar falls is not a really big place. you have only 40,000 people in seat door falls. the reason they compete with that's other big cities, because citizens got together to make the investment to bring competition in and make sure internet speeds were as fast there as anywhere else. cspan: what is your reaction? >> guest: my reaction, broadband is a really complex issue. i think it is not an area that i'm, i would say an expert in. i'm more of analyst of the broader internet economy and its cultural economy. what i would say i think there is an exaggerated sense of the poor quality of american broadband. america does better in broadband than some people think. having said that though, i do like the korean model. i myself have no problems with

public investment in broadband in the same way as i tell the story in the internet is not the answer. the internet came out of government investment. it came down as a top-down project. so i'm, i am not an opponent of public investment in things like broadband. cspan: i wanted to ask you also the political question about this the president using this device the day before a speech. he i think he is first president that has ever done this. i found online, there ace whole list of people at the white house, like cory shulman the director of online engagement for the office of digital strategy, makes $73,000 a year. ashley, her title is, creative director for the office of digital strategy. jesse lee director of progressive media and online response. see if i've -- >> guest: what is difference between progressive media and regular media? cspan: i don't know but it says he makes $95,000 a year.

then we have another white house profile on adam garber. i want to make sure, he is a $72,000 a year guy. he doesn't have -- yes he does. video director for the office of digital strategy. >> guest: probably took the video of obama. cspan: there is more. lindsey holds, director of digital content for office of digital strategy. nathaniel luber director of the office of digital strategy and he is $80,000 a year man. >> guest: you think they're overpaid brian? cspan: i have no idea. i think it is interesting. i want your comment on the idea all these kind of folks work at the white house and what is the impact on your country? >> guest: i can't comment on those guys. what i would say seems to me a troubling intimacy between the obama administration and certain internet companies beginning with g. for example the new cto meagan smith, used to be the vp in

charge of business development at this company beginning with g. i'm sure you can think of it. if not look it up online. cspan: i can google it? >> guest: you may be able to google it. it seems to me, that kind of intimacy i find very troubling. cspan: why? >> guest: because google has an agenda. google is one of the two or three most powerful companies in the world. if obama surrounded himself, for example, with transportation policy, with all these people who used to work for ford i think people would be a little troubled by that. google has an agenda. google has an agenda on network neutrality. the owner of youtube. not surprising they're hostile in some ways to the idea of having to pay extra because youtube is one of the biggest users of broadband on the web. so i think, i'm a fan of obama. i'm not a u.s. citizen. so i don't vote. if i did vote i would have voted for obama.

i'm a supporter of him. i'm politically progressive but i am troubled by the way in witch obama and this company beginning with g and certain other companies seem to be a little too intimate. and i thought, after the last election when obama made the announcement that he was going to pursue this network neutrality legislation, he has played into the mob. he has played into this oversimplified notion there are these evil companies out there these cable companies or telcos which are treich todtrying to destroy the internet. it is absolute nonsense. it's a children's story. worse than a children's story it has been orchestrated by large companies like perhaps youtube or netflix who have an agenda. the real issue of network neutrality it's a fight between large companies about whether or not perhaps you should pay a to on the internet. it doesn't pertain to small people. it doesn't pertain to ordinary

internet users. it will not slow the network done. this is example of way internet is used and exploited by certain marketing departments and spin doctors to exploit people to get involved in issues so they don't really understand, that it is so comply catted network neutrality, ask five people in washington what network neutrality is and you get five different answers. . .

the invented the world wide web and made the internet accessible. it took the internet and made it popular. the reason i bring up 1989 is because we all thought history came to an end but it represents the beginning

of the 21st century. i think in a hundred years sure the world was interesting, full of capitalism but you have this symbolic handing over of history the issue of the cold war to the issue of the revolution. and today 1989 seems to be the year that marks the difference between the industrial 20th century in the digital 21st century. a hero a particularly publicly spirited scientist who did this out of love. love. no one was paying him. he essentially gave it away. all sorts of ip around. the problem as it shifted incredibly aggressive he

has become kind of irrelevant. he is a symbol of world which has been superseded by the googles and the market tucker burkes. i i am a great fan of his, great admirer i would say his romantic vision of the internet has not been realized. stands there and talks about the bill of rights i was stand there and say sure, we have not had that. the internet is too much about the bill of rights. if we are going to make it habitable place we're going to make it a successful place. if the internet is going to be the answer to the challenges of 21st century life we need responsibilities.

that is what is missing, effective responsibility. it becomes the receptacle for the culture of entitlement. entitlement. that is why there is that neutrality. delivered delivered in the middle of the night as a gift to the people the reflection of virtue and goodness. if we're going to make it a good place, a reflection of our qualities may more responsibility. c-span: i want to i want to bring up the ted thing again because it fits and. >> we bring it up. c-span: wouldn't exist without the internet? is that part of creating a community? >> guest: southern california. ironically enough i guy had

run this publishing company called future publishing was run for one of the examples of the internet cowboy who try and make a lot of money from the 1st. investments. he lost his job. he bought to and built it into a successful franchise. i think it would exist. essentially a salon. we don't rely on the internet. enlightenment. people want intelligent conversation. the reasons why he does so well. generally not just the internet, but television, an absence of people want that kind of thing. and in the 21st century the other thing is networking. i am ambivalent.

the challenge in this postindustrial world is to build the own personal them. there will be continually inventing and reinventing. the more people you know the more wealthy you are. value increasingly will not be your bank account but who you know. a very brilliant man. undergraduate at stanford, philosophy at oxford. a rhodes scholar. essentially invented social media or social networks. c-span: here you are back in that speech in 2012. >> we are being sold something also which is a scam something which is undermining who we are one

of the previous speakers talked about the importance of community, what i call the cold of the social. his community, community community. community brings us together. bill too many of them. all about how important it is for us to get together. for those of you who read the german question it is taken lock stock and barrel from the idea that technology allows us to realize our species we have this network, 2 billion people on it now data, dna, we can share that information and become communities.

of course it is nonsense, and worse than nonsense it is dangerous nonsense. c-span: is a dangerous? >> because it is not true. for two reasons. firstly, as he realized that his great work it is the interior that is so important. the role of government is to protect the interior. at the museum in amsterdam the great artist of the interior. and i am a believer in the idea of protecting the individual the social chance to lend itself to conformity. so that was the 1st thing. the social, which i am not against i don't think being social is a bad thing. i i don't think we should lock ourselves and our run. i'm not in favor of going

back to us a case. if the extension of the south. when we got on facebook you are not really networking, not really being social, but more and more people are using it all any of these networks. using it to broadcast yourself, to show off yourself and ironically enough it is more and more alienated. so the social is actually fragmenting. alienating. and you see that particularly we were told that social media would create these great movements. the arab spring, occupy. look what happened to

occupy. simply an explosion of individual voices. there was never any successful molding of those voices. it was it was a quote of individuals, and it never for into a political organization. in the middle east we know the catastrophe that follow the arab spring. c-span: you mentioned mentioned carl marx this last clip. where do you put him in importance to make the internet is not the answer. my great uncle who was a follower of marks the bagman. the guy who recycled money through england. we have a family that was

made up of merchants or idealists. a fascinating way. so the german ideology he writes about a postcapitalist age where technology will free us. he says very famously you can fish in the morning and found in the afternoon. you see that and a lot of these idealists something in the long-term. free us from the banality of work. the catastrophe digital revolution what it is doing

is destroying jobs which means we won't have the cash to the farmers and fishermen are poets. c-span: you mentioned you run a salon. as a televised? >> guest: i hope i hope it will be televised. you guys would run it. in palo alto. i where your had symbolically. and we talk about the impact of technology. in contrast we have an invitation-only group. it is supported by at&t and erickson. a wonderful event. taken it around the world. san francisco.

it gives me the opportunity. c-span: you do an interview series. >> guest: my tech crunch shifted to arrival. c-span: and how often do you do interviews? >> guest: about once a week. c-span: here is an excerpt of three of them. ♪ >> technology continues to dramatically change the world, so dramatically that even politicians current politicians are realizing digital technology can change dramatically and revolutionize government. the 1st politicians is gavin newsom.

the number two guy. he's famous. famous for his insights into technology. welcome. the founder and ceo. >> i come out with a new book. welcome to tech crunch take crunch tv. >> thank you for having me here. full of optimism. missed the future. nostalgic for the future. c-span: another example. is this an expensive thing to put together? >> guest: i don't pay for it. tech crunch paid for it. c-span: does it work for them? >> guest: it works for me. i should not admit this publicly.

everyone will know about it. you do certain things. we do this for two or three reasons. it gets my name out there. it's a great way to research the acknowledgments i think everyone my way of doing research. it pays me something, but not a great deal of money. tech crunch the main business model is advertising. and events. videos don't get the that kind of page views the text do. and as i said before.

>> a huge audience. not interested in this kind of conversation. run by doctor david kirkpatrick more one of the smartest and most interesting technology journalists. the conversation is a little bit more sophisticated. i watched the show a couple of months ago with walter isaacson and it was fun. c-span: your book, and you mentioned this earlier, and memory of the felber and sons. your uncle? >> victor farber was my great grandfather.

my grandfather. the store or an office. and i used in the book not just for nostalgic reasons the opportunity to talk about myself because they represent an example of the way in which technological change affects business. i write about them as people who 1st rode the wave of technological innovation the invention of the industrial sewing machine. allowed traders to sell their stuff to women. but then you had another technological revolution which made her business essentially. then then you had cheap off-the-shelf dresses and clothing particularly for women that weight -- made women's lives change that did not have the time or interest in making their own stuff. suddenly there business

ironically enough is coming back now with 3 d printing. as i explained in the book there are some challenges with business models. if everyone has access to the same software and all you are doing is buying 3 d printers it's not clear where the business model is a whether or not the traditional fabric industry fashion industry will disrupt the way. c-span: you talk about and nine -year-old boy that you had in a video i watched on our network in the strand bookstore in 2007. with that may 16 or 17 now? how many kids do you have? what do they think of all the stuff your writing about? >> guest: they are embarrassed. my son is an avid internet user typical of his

generation, very smart. i have a feeling much more glued to his little device than the books. he is an example of someone with all the strengths and weaknesses someone that does not read enough books. as nicholas carr writes my son is typical of a generation the speeds across the surface very quick with making connections, very quick with getting things but on the other hand i think he struggles to get beneath the surface. my 13 -year-old is at the waldorf school. it is where this green is essentially outlawed. you sign an agreement as a parent which will discourage your child from using devices like this screens ipads, computers not allowed in the classroom. a more traditional kind of

education. ironically ironically it came from a 19th century austrian education list. a different kind of experience and still reads a lot of books. eventually which is to 15 or 16 she will get her hands on these devices. c-span: where did you meet your wife? >> guest: my ex-wife graduate school. student of history and i i was a student of political science. then she went to the harvard law school. i was a teacher. still very friendly. c-span: did you actually get thrown out of uc berkeley? >> guest: yes. c-span: what happened then? >> guest: i became

unemployed. when i happened to turn up in silicon valley or san francisco my ex-wife moved from cambridge to san francisco i really did not have much. a part-time music journalist for part-time this, part-time that trying to be a writer, trying to be a journalist. so i was very lucky to turn up in san francisco in 1995. i had the eclectic skill the ability to talk and sell and think and write which allowed me to be that 1st wave of entrepreneur. entrepreneur. a great chance to be in san francisco. other people like me who made about. and some of them succeeded. still varies proud of that failure. c-span: what was the name? and what did he do?

c-span: i never figured that one out. digital music, the selling of audio hardware. i think it was a great time to try something. it's different now. crawling with one of the entrepreneurs. when i was around no one really knew about it. i went from having absolutely no business experience or skills to being a ceo of the company were several million dollars the head of the head of intel's asian operation as the president of my board other distinguished people. a really exciting time. but the funny story we were destroyed by amazon.

we -- the original focus was to sell audio equipment, hardware. about 95 or 96. an e-commerce platform. we were getting watched. raised money. and then three months before we launched amazon which at that.was simply an online bookstore watch the electronic books watch the electronic store kind of automatic thing. after that i was in the men's bathroom. ..

at the same time their business practice is likely to the book are somewhat questionable. c-span: we only have a couple of minutes left to. >> guest: this has been quick. c-span: very quick. i have to ask you about two people you write about and show some admiration for. frank compton and hannah art. why were they mention in your book? >> guest: cafta because he was described in the world of surveillance bureaucracy a

world where it seemed as if we were being watched in everything we were doing. the trial and the classic examples of this. i make it clear that cap go was a student of different kind of central european utilitarianism. this world that we are embracing and yet we are being perpetually watched and cafko at its most brilliant and he was extremely brilliant even he couldn't come up with anything quite as outrageous. another two out of 30 that list i would put the argentine short story writer. in many ways he imagined is much more accurately than cafko and the theorist of totalitarianism as the person who argues that

totalitarians the origins of totalitarianism lie in the destruction of institutions that lie between the individual and the state. that's what i fear that is happening today with the internet. the internet is destroying so much tradition, so many of those institutions. and what arendt was so so brilliant that was observing the anger the banality of evil of fascism and i fear in the right economic circumstances we could find ourselves in a similar kind of catastrophic situation. c-span: we have seen you speaking. we have seen you interviewing and we have talked about your bookwriting and you alluded to this earlier but how do you make money? >> guest: that's a secret. c-span: a secret? >> guest: i make my money in a lot of different ways. i make my money as a writer but

writing isn't lucrative enough to pay for my kids school fees and mortgage payments and all the other things you need. i am paid as a speaker. they do some consultancy. i do some investment. i'm paid as the executive producer of future cast. i'm paid is a senior fellow at a company called cal and updates so i am paid in many different ways. a friend of mine, her son who is one of the original internet s. he was on my original board, he corrupt and detroit in a poor family. he grew up in the ghetto and he said to me when he was growing up when he was in a room he always wanted there to be more than one door more than one place to escape. the way i make my living as i do want to be reliant on one thing so if the book doesn't work out there's a speaking and at the speaking doesn't work out their set production. the production doesn't work out

there's the consulting. i think my career is kind of a model for this new world because we have to be entrepreneurial. the idea of being a pure writer and sitting in a room in churning out masterpieces was fined maybe in the 20th century but even cafko couldn't make a living. so we need to learn if you want to be creative you have to be entrepreneurial. you need to learn how to take risks and you need to learn that you need to play a lot of the boards. you need to play a lot of the tables simultaneously because you should never rely on a single thing not a single company or a single idea or single book or a single enterprise. c-span: our guest has been andrew keen. the title of this book is the internet is not the answer and we thank you very much. >> guest: thank you.

with congress on their two-week spring recess is weak where featuring booktv in prime-time. here's a look at what's ahead. up next at 8:00 a look at the use of mercenaries in wars today followed by famer -- former navy s.e.a.l. veteran discussing his book trust betrayed.