I paraphrase him:
The last year has seen a collapse of respect for the conventional repositories of authority and respect. Arab Spring --> government. The West --> big business & finance.
And the big reason for the change:
But there were other factors in the decline of authority. I doubt it has ever shocked people to learn that their era’s main deciders were incompetent. But someone had to do it and you hoped for the best. What’s often been lacking is a sense that there are other plausible ways to reach decisions. That sense of an alternative way to run things is what the Internet may have implanted.
The power of authority diminishes when you can hear credible, contesting voices. Print tends to be monotonal and univocal, unlike the oral tradition that preceded it. But the Internet, though it often lacks actual speech, is oral in the sense of interactive, like a Socratic dialogue. In oral mode, less is often more because speech is so laden with gesture, tone etc.; even something as short as a tweet can suffice. That too diminishes normal authority, which likes to rumble on.
I put this in the context of the third industrial revolution. Communication in the first was print. In the second it was the telephone. In the third it is the internet.
Democracy is the worst form of government, except every other form we've tried. That was very true when Churchill said it - you seem to be hinting that it may not be true for every form of authority we will try?
ReplyDeleteMike,
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between government and authority.
The author's thesis was that respect for authorities is diminishing. This would (one hopes) tend to support a trend towards government of the people by the people. To make an idealized extrapolation, what would happen if all new laws proposed by congress were open to comment?
Ok, in the real world it would be hell. I meant in a utopia, where the comments are thoughtful and intelligent, and where the lawmakers have to pay attention to them.