There has been a lot of bickering lately about authority on the web being or ot synonymous to the number of followers on Twitter. This discussion was triggered by an initial post of Loïc LeMeur. Stowe Boyd summarized the essentials of this discussion in another post written yesterday.
Surprisingly, nobody makes a clear distinction between popularity and authority. Loïc LeMeur or Robert Scoble managed to become some kind of pop stars of the web, meaning that they tend to be everywhere and connected to everyone. Does this mean they have authority? Yes and no. Yes because they have established their names as strong brands on the web, and that they have become valuable sources of information as amplifiers of faint signals. What they bring to our attention is most often very interesting , because they are connected to a lot of very interesting people. But it doesn't mean that their opinion as persons really matters. They are journalists and commentators in essence. But they cannot be compared to web gurus like David Weinberger ("Everything is miscellaneous"), Nassim-Nicholas Taleb ("The black Swan"), Don Tapscott ("Wikinomics") or Tom Friedman ("The Earth is Flat") to name a few, who have written widely acclaimed books on the economy of the web, and who are not all using Twitter as far as I know. Why would social behaviors on the web be so different than in real life?
Something I really worry about is the false idea of democracy that permeates the web like a new ideology. Depending on how you use it, the web as a tool that lowers the barriers to establish both democracy or dictatorship. Democracy in ancient Greece was limited in space (the Agora), and had little to do with equal rights. However, it was based on three principles:
- Your voice equals mine
- Your air time to voice your opinions will be the same as mine
- i will respect your privacy and you will respect mine.
The third point is particularly interesting. The ancient Greeks knew that the essence of democracy is your right to have an opinion and voice it to try and convince other people to act accordingly, not about seducing the people with dreams. That is why privacy was so important. Democracy is built on interconnected communities, whereas dictatorship is built on masses of indistinguishable individuals. So in that sense it can be argued that the world wide web is profoundly both democratic, when it encourages people to enter into conversations and discussions, and undemocratic when it encourages people to worship stars and gurus.
In the end, it really depends on what Loïc and Robert want to do with their fame. Is it just to use the web as an echo chamber to attract morons, thereby satisfying their ego and making money, or is it to bring important stuff to our attention, building their practice and making the world a better place? Nobody can answer that question but them.
