The late 1940 through the late 1950s were to writing what the mid 70s were to music.
What am I talking about?
Punk rock and Beat poetry.
These two forms of expression took an established concept (artists create art), and turned it upside down. Jack Kerouac wrote a book that, on its surface, was nothing more than the mad ramblings of a guy who traveled too much and hung out with a bunch of crazy people. The style and form of the Beat writers was a reaction against the main-stream literary establishment of the day, but the message most commonly received was:
”You don’t have to be some academic elitist sitting in the ivory tower espousing the value of Lord Byron and the Bard all day in order to write compelling poetry and prose.”
The fact that these Beat writers were, often, skilled, academically educated, and spent an absurd amount of time honing their craft changed the context of that message, but not what people heard.
The punk rock movement was similar. Bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols sent the message that you didn’t have to be (or pretend to be) some kind of musical poet or modern composer in order to have a good time. Like the Beats, punk rockers were reacting against a main-stream, rock n’ roll scene that was increasingly dominated by complex acts, extravagant musical solos, absurd style, and an increasing aloofness suggesting rock musicians were more than ordinary people. People heard essentially the same thing from the Punk movement that they heard from the Beats:
”Anyone can do this. You can do this.”
Let’s call this the Anyone realization.
Let’s cut ahead to the internet revolution. The internet isn’t exactly as cheap as many people think it is (you usually have to buy a computer and procure an internet connection EDIT: or go to a library...whatever), but the ability to publish an idea where essentially anyone with a computer can see it is unique. Compared to the cost of self-publishing books or music, the internet offers a virtually unlimited ability to send ideas out to an infinite number of people.
This medium has been exploited by the same people who started writing spontaneous poetry and random music. You can now go online and partake of a virtually unlimited library of poetry, music, etc. There’s no possible way people like me, who have been surfing the web since middle school, could possibly understand how different this is than how material was made available in the 50s or 60s.
In a sense, the sheer volume of available material has diluted the astounding nature of this revolution. Nobody thinks much of online poetry when a simple Google search reveals 10,000 poems by people who, I’m putting this kindly, have the poetic ability of a horse. The one or 10 of those poems that actually sound amazing is considerably diminished as a result. We’ll return to this in a moment.
The meme that has continued the tradition of punk rock and beat poetry is the blog. I often think of blogs as on-line diaries. Authors are writing about their own experiences, jobs, joys, hardships and anything else to an audience that may number from few to many. These posts may be daily or weekly or hourly and share the common feature that they are updated more often than a book. The whole concept is a little fuzzy, since journals and diaries were traditionally private and a blog is, almost by definition, available to a practically infinite audience. Numerous people who write blogs have not been properly appreciative of that fact and as a result have been fired for saying things online (to the public) that they would never say in person to anyone.
However, when I say that blogs are continuing the tradition of punk rock and beat poetry this is not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the ‘Anyone’ realization in regards to news.
24-hour news agencies have always had “experts” who offered their opinion. Newspapers have long had columnists who spoke with some measure of authority regarding the world, the media, celebrity, or humor on a weekly basis (the mere idea seems quaint). Other media outlets paid people to talk/write about the cultural, political, and economic ramifications of everything from daylight savings time to Jennifer Aniston’s hair.
The blog changed the relevance of the “expert.” No longer were you required to have anything resembling a qualification in order to espouse your viewpoint to a large audience. Nobody was vetting Anyone’s ability to say things. You could read an opinion on CNN.com and then head over to randommonkeys.com and get another opinion: They were both being broadcast to the same audience! This is the Anyone realization. Anyone can be an expert.
The exchange of information over the internet further started spreading the ideas of other experts. The guy on NBC who said that pollution-induced asthma was killing babies was now being contradicted by a guy on coal-industry websites who was spreading a very different interpretation of research.
And here we see the difference in these revolutions. With Beat poetry and Punk rock, the elitist attitudes being rejected by the movement were based on a rather flimsy foundation: That the ivory tower of academic criticism was the arbitrator of good and bad.
Who, ultimately, is the arbitrator of ‘good taste’ or talent? Why should Roger Ebert’s thumbs down for Scorpion King really mean anything more than a 17-year-old’s exuberant thumbs up? Why did academic literary critics routinely pan science fiction as the former became increasingly popular?
The emergence of the Anyone expert is a slightly different beast. While ‘expert opinion’ on matters of artistic expression no longer carries much weight within mainstream society (Oprah is far more influential) due to that ridiculous foundation, expert opinion on matters of technical knowledge resides on an entirely different foundation. When discussing the ability of a foundation to support a 30 story building, the “experts” actually have access to an understanding of objective reality that not just Anyone possesses. Engineers, scientists, and doctors do, in fact, carry a special knowledge about a particular area of expertise that does inform the advice and opinions they offer. People without that special knowledge are often not capable of offering better advice. The Anyone realization in relationship to ‘expert opinion’ is not likely to improve the world, but rather likely to cause confusion and poor decision making.
This isn’t to say that blogs are universally bad or inherently unlikely to aid the development of human culture. Another revolution being driven by blogs is something I think of as ‘directed’ news, or news that centers solely on a particular subject or theme. Whereas stories about a particular subject may rarely penetrate the front page or television portion of traditional news outlets, blogs may often highlight all the stories relevant to a particular subject.
Ultimately the Anyone realization in regards to expert opinion on matters of technical expertise will either work itself out somehow, or will fade away. Over the long-term, reliance on unqualified experts will reveal itself to be a flawed premise (if in fact it is the case) and such ‘experts’ will be left to shout to an audience that no longer exists. Even now the emergence of blogs analyzing blogs, or experts analyzing experts, may ultimately lead to popular acceptance of only those experts who can demonstrate the special knowledge that is vital to a valuable opinion. Sports blogs, and NBA blogs in particular, are already doing this, by constantly redirecting traffic to sites with useful and intelligent analysis and opinions and ignoring sites without. Such meta-criticism among the community of experts on more important topics (science, politics, law) seems to have a rich history in journals and print already, and as a result is being translated (in spurts) to the digital realm.
Where am I going with this? I really don’t know. I just started thinking about this and wrote it down as I went. I’m pretty sure none of these thoughts are particularly novel, and I’m pretty sure you’re reading this on my blog. I suspect that blogs will becoming increasingly regulated by advertiser dollars, traffic redirects, and search engine results, and as a result, the role of individual experts for technical expertise will probably be diluted by more experts, but eventually the quality of those opinions will be unchanged.
