Is technology making us dumber? I ask this question in all seriousness. Are our cell phones making us less aware of our surroundings, are video games slowly diffusing the electrical connections in our brains, or how about this: are blogs lowering the discourse for public intellectuals? Works like, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline by Posner, and The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe by Jacoby have attempted to profile American public intellectuals and assess their status as endangered species (maybe we should get WWF involved). When thinking about the blogosphere and the public intellectual’s role within it, the question must be asked, is the public intellectual’s impact reflected on the content of their work or on the medium through which it is disseminated?
The internet is a wonderful place. If I could live in it I would. I imagine it would be much like Mr. Wonka’s factory, except instead of gumdrops and licorice I could listen to all of the free music that I wanted, or use my imagination to have all sorts of strange questions answered. Where the delight would stop and confusion begin, is where to get my information from. Blogging’s user friendly format allows for anyone to electronically “publish” themselves for public consumption. However, does this make every blogger a public intellectual? The short answer is no, it does not. I hardly feel that blogs covering what toilet paper celebrities buy for their homes (or which celebrities don’t use toilet paper) is adding to the enrichment of anyone’s lives.
Yet, blogs can be venues for public intellectuals to get new ideas out in lickety-split timing. There are established public intellectuals that have switched over from journals and publications to screens and URLs. By disseminating the same information that they would publish in the New York Times or in Foreign Policy on the internet does not make their ideas any less “academic”. It actually makes them more accessible, and in the world of public intellectuals, the more people who hear, read, or see you, the more merit badges you earn.
The problem with blogging is the volume. Allow me to compare the plight of public intellectuals with some dry economics. In the case of perfectly competitive markets, one of the criteria is that there is an absence of barriers to entry or exit in the market. With blogging anyone can easily set up a site, and dismantle it within seconds. The problem is that public intellectuals do not seek a perfectly competitive market. There are oligopolies, cartels, and those damned unions that get in the way of everyone joining the club. In this sense the method, in this case blogs, and the purpose of intellectuals to be a part of what Stephen Mack describes as a “class of academics and philosophically oriented writers” is watered down. Internet goers do not have the time to research all potential blogs and so called public intellectuals to know whose information is worth reading, and whose is garbage. Russell Jacoby perfectly states the dilemma that intellectuals run the risk of simply “adding to the cacophony” by utilizing blogs.
Blogging should have a label on the package that says, “WARNING: May cause attention deficit disorder.” Readers can look at blogs, click flashing ads, be redirected to links, and leave the site at random. The more worrisome fact is that as quickly as blogs are produced, they are just as easily forgotten. In this way, it may benefit the public intellectual to have traditionally published works thrown out into the public forum, if for nothing more than a sense of permanency. I can tell you one thing, if Adam Smith had an electronic version of Wealth of Nations online I wouldn’t have gone past the title page before redirecting my attention to something else with bright colors and bold type.
In the blogosphere you don’t need a publisher, an advisor, or a department head. You are free to speak on whatever topic you so choose. Many writers choose pseudonyms to protect their professional lives on the internet, even though freedom of expression was legal last I checked. The problem with unmarked blogs is that people want to know who it is that is trying to reach out to them. It bugs the hell out of me when I find a quote that I think is perfect and the author is simply stated “anonymous”. Yet, when it comes to the public arena the argument for legitimizing a public intellectual is a battle of credentials versus content.
Should we need to know that the person writing about genocide is a professor, or just a socially involved citizen? Certainly a person would feel more inclined to take the word of the Professor with street cred over the person that lives on the street. But does it really matter? If people have good ideas that are digested by the public, it should not matter whether they have the correct job description to be classified a public intellectual. I disagree with Posner’s idea to rank the top 571 public intellectuals, or for Foreign Policy to create a list of the top 100 public intellectuals. Your membership into the club shouldn’t be based on whether you were included in the Who’s Who of the intelligentsia, but on the topics you discuss and their importance to society.
This generation of public intellectuals has grown up seeking out the television interviews and namesake websites that their predecessors shunned. Blogs are a great tool to both send out new information and to get feedback from a larger audience. The problem is that the internet cannot educate the public on the author’s credentials, or political and ideological biases. It is the public in this case that lacks the time and energy to keep up with every individual claiming public intellectual status. It is with this idea that I conclude the public intellectual is not dead; they're merely lost in the static.
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