Andrew Keen’s new book, The Cult of the Amateur is the latest addition to the Newsnight book club. In it, the author expresses his concern for the profligacy of online amateurism, spawned by the digital revolution. This, he feels, has had a destructive impact on our culture, economy and values.

He says, “[They] can use their networked computers to publish everything from uninformed political commentary, to unseemly home videos, to embarrassingly amateurish music, to unreadable poems, reviews, essays, and novels”.

He complains that blogs are “collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture”.

This has been pointed out for quite some time now. Once we destroy the hierarchy that promotes people on the level of their corresponding ability, the big crowd will want to dumb things down so that any idiot can understand what's going on. They don't care if they kill brilliance, distort the truth, drive away creativity, make originality bland, and turn everything into a trend; they're here to express their ego and because of their power in sheer numbers, they overwhelm us all.

Luckily, a society founded on those principles will collapse sooner or later. For each failure they make, we are proven to be right, and when this empire finally falls, it will allow us to promote only the very educated and brilliant to power.