For thousands of years, people considered great innovators and philosophers to be the thought leaders of humanity. Plato and Aristotle spent their days at the city square trying various philosophical questions, and many people spent their days listening to them. People followed them, because these philosophers were very well educated and incredibly intelligent. Their EXPERTISE gave them AUTHORITY to speak their thoughts to large audiences. They were able to answer questions better than everyone else, so everyone else listened. Their EXPERTISE made them THOUGHT LEADERS.
For the first time in thousands of years the definition a THOUGHT LEADER has changed. We get information not only from professional journalists, but also from bloggers- that is, people around us who do not necessarily have EXPERTISE. In the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, the founders of Western thought, noone could even imagine that other people start talking themselves instead of listening to the experts. What has changed?
It's funny: my first thoughts when I read this were, "What would Plato's blog look like?" and "How full of controversy would Socrates' comment box be?"
ReplyDeleteGetting serious now, it IS interesting to consider how the the idea of the expert is challenged in today's technological world. EVERYONE is an expert, as is demonstrated by Wikipedia, where the summation of knowledge (as a recent study tells us)is generally as accurate as the "expert" entries in Encyclopedia Brittanica. Perhaps there is a wisdom in the crowds?
I agree to some degree that there is wisdom in the crowds. However, I do not believe that this "crowd wisdom" is represented in a typical blog.
ReplyDeleteA wikipedia page is written by experts in a sense. Clearly, people who wrote about "Australopithecus sediba" or Blackfoot Confederacy have studied or at least studied something about these topics. If they make a mistake- they get corrected by other experts. clearly, I am not going to correct the Australopithecus sediba article, because I don't know enough about it. I did make a contribution to the wikipedia article about Ukraine. Most people will correct an article only if they are passionate about the topic and consider themselves experts enough to correct the article. On average, the wikipedia article will be right.
Conversely, a blog is written by a single person- the owner of the blog. No one can change it- one can only comment on it (If the comments are even permitted by the author). The author can delete the comments. A blog will not reflect the wisdom of crowds for at least 2 reasons:
1. a single person (the author) has absolute control of the group.
2. even if we assume that the author does permit comments and does not delete them, not enough people contribute to make it a wisdom of the crowds. While I did correct a wikipedia article about Ukraine, the widely accepted source of user-written information, I do not plan to search every blog that mentions Ukraine and try to correct the mistakes . Whatever the author has written will stay there (at least for a long time)
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ReplyDeleteAfter reading your blog, a book that Dartmouth assigned to us to read before coming to Hanover suddenly came into my mind, "The Wisdom of Crowds". It's interesting how the invention of blog and other internet application has empowered ordinary people to articulate their ideas. However, does this empowerment facilitate the improvement of our society? Or does this empowerment actually create a chaotic platform of information, where it's harder and harder to distinguish truth from lies.
ReplyDeleteMy another question would be do we still need thought leaders in this internet era since people could simply google the answers to various questions? How would you define a thought leader? Does a person become a thought leader because his/her ideas are accepted by most people or his/her ideas hold the truth? I would really like to keep reading your blog!
Thanks for your comment. Indeed, I will try to explore the idea of being a thought leader in modern society.
ReplyDeleteAs to your second question, this is precisely the problem I think: you can just google it. You get plenty of info, but you don't know if you can trust it. Yet, we follow people's blogs. Yet, we subscribe to updates. Our following makes the bloggers leaders, or though leaders at least. Subscribing to a blog is like coming to hear Plato speak. However, is it as enriching? I have an opinion that it is not. Reading blogs is even dangerous in a sense- that's my preliminary opinion. I will try to test it in this blog and see what I end up with.
Hey Anya,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog. I had never really thought about how society's means of learning information had changed. While reading your post, I had the same questions as the previous blogger. Do you think that there are some instances in which blogs are a useful source of information?
Well, sure I do thinks blogs can be useful. I read blogs myself. I even write one to express my thoughts. I'll try to elaborate on it in my next post.
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to be "educated" to be intelligent.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with "experts" is that they don't often speak in terms that the average man understands (let's not even go into Plato and his philosophy). I can rest assured that bodies of knowledge created by people like myself are more easily relatable to my own life and the kinds of knowledge I seek. Am I limited by this form of knowledge? Perhaps, but it is all I ever seem to need. Wikipedia has never failed me. If by "expert" you mean educated, esoteric, elitists then I'll pass.