Silicon Valley insider Andrew Keen to speak at next Dublin Pub Summit

30 May 2012

Author and outspoken critic of internet culture, Web 2.0 and Facebook, Andrew Keen will be speaking at the upcoming Dublin Pub Summit on 21 June.

Keen, who has authored books like Cult of the Amateur and Digital Vertigo, is a also a noted academic, investor, entrepreneur, and occasional columnist with TechCrunch.

He is openly critical of internet culture and famously described Web 2.0 as a “grand Utopian movement” similar to the communist society espoused by Karl Marx.

In his latest book, Digital Vertigo, which questions the purpose of social networks, he asks does Mark Zuckerberg really know what the word “friend” means and wonders if everybody should really be broadcasting the most intimate details of their lives on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Every online start-up, he argues, is now going social in a transformation called Web 3.0.

He also argues that social media transformation is actually disorienting and dividing us rather than uniting us or heralding the dawn of a new egalitarian age.

Organised by the team behind the Dublin Web Summit and F.ounders, the Dublin Pub Summit takes place at 6pm at Dakota Bar on South William Street.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com