Issue 40: Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By Medulla Vesuvius

A Democracy of Voices

Dr. Roger Korby and Amdnarg Toh are the two technology writers for Nerd City, which is as it should be. Anytime I write about technology I always seem to come across as a cranky Luddite. And I’m sure this article will seem to be no exception.

But let me say from the outset that computers, the internet and technology in general are not the main players in what follows. I’ve been musing on culture lately. But I have to discuss technological trends to do it.

I can really say this in one sentence: Through the wonders of the internet, there is a potential democracy of voices like never before.

Anyone with a computer and a connection to the internet can potentially broadcast any and all thoughts that happen to occur to them. Any creative impulse, recounting of daily minutiae, obsessive interest, or important message for mankind can be expelled into the void in any form—old school communication like words and sentences like the article you’re reading, audio, pictures, or even video. (Have you heard of this new thing they’ve got called “YouTube?” I hope so, because it’s named after you.)

This is a world in which everything is possible as far as “expressing yourself” to other people is concerned. And my initial image when thinking about this was that of a world with a billion or so islands, each occupied by one person and a limitless supply of messages in a bottle. You’ll notice in this image that there is no “Bureau of Message Regulation.” Each message is equally important and valid.

But that’s not how real life is, though, right? In real life there are voices that get heard more than others. These are voices of authority. They are journalists, “experts,” entertainers, etc. You read what they have to say in newspapers and magazines, see them on talk shows, pay beaucoups of money to watch them perform in concert…But it appears that they are a dying breed.

This all became clear to me a few months ago as I was reading The Onion’s AV Club. At the bottom of every page was a divided section for “Comments.” I was struck by two things. 1) Underneath every album and movie review there was literally page after page of comments by readers, the first one invariably saying something along the lines of “I’m the first to comment. Hooray!” 2) Every interview had at least one comment that said: “Good interview.” I wondered what the criteria were for a “good” interview. I always thought that interviews were fairly value neutral. One person asks another person some questions and writes down the answers.

And that particular instance betrayed a larger trend. Seemingly everything is now available for opinion. For instance, you can choose to make public your agreement or disagreement with some news article about Vladimir Putin, regardless of the fact that you may have never stepped foot on Russian soil or the fact that you can’t name a leading figure in Russian leadership. (I certainly can’t.)

I realized at that moment how old school I am. There are few things I would rather read less than the opinions of some random people…maybe the phone book. (I’ve never read “Letters to the Editor” either.) But underneath this preference of mine lies a huge assumption-that some people’s utterances are of more value than others.

Have you ever seen those CNN polls where they ask people questions like “Is the troop surge in Iraq succeeding?” Well, I imagine there is a pretty small number of folks who could actually answer that question with any degree of authority and I’ll guarantee you none of them are sitting at home responding to internet polls. But still we feel a need to know what other people’s perception of a situation is, regardless of their credentials.

I trust what a journalistic professional has to say about the latest developments in culture, for instance, much more than your average joe off the street. The professional journalist, I assume, spends his or her time poring over recent research and boring sources and reports the aggregate results so I don’t have to do all the legwork. Your average “commenter” just has an opinion to voice. However, it could also be that the journalist just makes everything up like Jayson Blair did or just fakes it, like Medulla Vesuvius.

I have a feeling that this idea of professional writers and thinkers is becoming quaint. For, what are the media if not a grand cascade of the opinions of random people? When I read reporting or commentary by someone with an actual by-line, I really don’t know them any better than a random “comment” poster. Maybe I justify my faith in the professional by saying I read their column regularly. I know them. Or I say to myself, “Surely they wouldn’t have been hired to write by a company if they didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Anyway, all of this leads to the fact that, with the increased ability of people to speak their mind and have others actually hear it, the unmitigated truth of matters, (if such a thing exists), can become obscured. Authority can easily be lost in a sea of mere opinion.

Whether you describe this situation as: a) a “democracy of voices”-a Miltonian system in which only the best ideas win the day, or b) a noisy “Cacophony,” depends upon your general outlook on life and faith in humanity.