The
definition of a public intellectual was rocked by the advent of the Internet.
The pre-Internet public intellectual was able to cater to a specific segment of
society, separated by race, culture, education, and access to opportunity. Much
like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the invention of the Internet brought down
the barriers that had kept public intellectuals safe in their academic
fortresses that allowed them to speak to their expertise without worry of
reaching those outside their walls.
Post-Internet
public intellectuals now live in world characterized by globalization. For an
intellectual to reach the general public he or she must be able to navigate,
for example, the cultural salad bowl that is the United States. This public
intellectual requires a different awareness and skill set than their
predecessors. He or she must be able to speak or write on a subject in such a
way that it communicates and relates to each culture individually whilst being
written for a general audience. In addition, this public intellectual must be
able to convey complex ideas and theories in a manner in which a layperson can
understand and internalize, while also maintaining a monkish focus on their
area of expertise. Being articulate and possessing an ability to connect with
an audience through many mediums is also a must. No longer can the public
intellectual confine themselves to books, journal articles, and academic
lectures restricted to their peers. Now they must be adept at blogging,
podcasting, and the television interview aimed at a wider and more general
audience.
Conversely,
today’s public intellectual no longer has to come from an academic background.
Where public intellectuals previously needed doctorates in their fields to be
considered experts, today’s public intellectual can be self-taught, lacking
degrees or professional credentials in the fields on which they expound.
Malcolm Gladwell is the perfect example of this. He has a bachelor’s in history
and admits that his grades were not competitive for graduate school. While he
set out for a career in advertising, he was rejected and instead found a career
in journalism. It was as journalist, first with The American Spectator and later with The Washington Post and The
New Yorker, that he began to develop into what we would today call a public
intellectual.
Gladwell
himself has set forth the theory, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, that in order to be an expert one
must devote at least 10,000 hours to a pursuit. In a 2008 interview with Lev
Grossman in Time magazine, Gladwell
reflected on how he really learned to be a master of his craft, which at the
time was journalism. He said, “I was a basket case at the beginning, and I felt
like an expert at the end. It took 10 years—exactly that long.”[i]
He since applied this theory to understanding and becoming an expert in field
of self-development. Gladwell has found a niche as the author of three books,
the aforementioned Outliers, as well
as The Tipping Point: How Little Things
Make a Big Difference and Blink: The
Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
Gladwell
is quoted as saying that his goal for his writing was to “mine current academic
research for insights, theories, direction, or inspiration.”[ii]
He has been able to do just that, mine what he has learned about new and
complex theories and ideas in the social sciences and turn them into accessible
and understandable articles and books for anyone ranging from athletes to
businessmen. In the process, he has become a public intellectual that can
expound on these topics while appealing to a large general audience. He is able
to take the complex and scientific and condense it down into a populist message
that applies to an audience’s every day life. As Michiko Kakutani wrote in her
review of Outliers for the The New York Times, Gladwell’s books
“Both popularize scientific, sociological and psychological theories in a
fashion that makes for lively water-cooler chatter about Big Intriguing
Concepts….”[iii]
Gladwell takes theory and makes it practical. That is what a public
intellectual should strive for.
The
risk of course is that the research and theories behind these ideas are
oversimplified and even dumbed down. Critics of Gladwell’s work have charged
him with putting forth hypotheses that “not only rely heavily on suggestion and
innuendo, but they also pivot deceptively around various anecdotes and studies
that are selective in the extreme….”[iv] In
addition, critics have questioned the reliability of his examples, noting that
the reader is not given the context of the examples to question their reliability
or timeliness.[v]
These
complaints can be lobbed against any so-called public intellectual who lacks
the academic training that used to be a prerequisite to being called a public
intellectual. The fact is that works written for the general public will not be
subjected to the same rigorous fact checking and sourcing to which an academic
work will be held. Judgment of the work lies with the audience, and with
critics to sort it out. However, such works often succeed in taking complex and
narrow theories and looking at them in an original way and applying them to
every day life. Popularizing the social science behind decision making, as
Gladwell did in his book Blink, only
serves to help readers. These readers can decide what works for them and what
does not.
While
some of today’s public intellectuals lack the academic training in their
respective fields, they have found other means to supplement their knowledge.
Gone are the days when the Ivy League elite cornered the market on the debate
of ideas. Today’s public intellectual benefits from a more open intellectual
landscape that allows everyone access to research and resources to formulate
their own opinions and theories with careful study and analysis. This is true
of Gladwell, who himself has talked about the efforts required to call oneself
an expert. While more public intellectuals are coming to the forefront with a
journalism background, they should not be looked down upon for their original
field of study. They come to their subjects of interest with a journalist’s
interest in discovery and fact checking. Just like the academic, they put the
time and work into becoming experts on their topics and to knowing the ins and
outs and the most current ideas. As the author Stephen Mack clearly states,
ultimately a public intellectual should be judged on whether or not the public
believes they are “hearing things worth talking about.”[vi]
One
consequence of the Internet that must also be considered in any discussion of
the modern public intellectual is the fact that today’s public intellectuals more
often come to present an argument, not to have a debate. They are what Joseph
Epstein, writing a book review in The
Weekly Standard, calls “publicity intellectuals”:
For it is far
from clear that we even have intellectuals any longer—at least not in the old
sense of men and women living on and for ideas, imbued with high culture,
willing to sacrifice financially to live the undeterred life of the mind….
Instead, we have so-called public intellectuals, a very different, much
less impressive, type, whom I have always thought should be called Publicity
Intellectuals. Public intellectual is another term for talking head—men and
women who have newspaper columns or blogs or appear regularly on television and
radio talk shows and comment chiefly on politicians and political programs;
they tend to be articulate without any sign of being cultured, already lined
and locked up politically, and devoted to many things, but the disinterested
pursuit of the truth not among them.[vii]
While Gladwell has made a career living “on
and for ideas,”[viii] there is
a difference between him and his predecesors of the pre-Internet age. He can be
rightly labeled a “publicity intellectual” because he has become a celebrity in
the self-help field. But this comes with the territory of modern public
intellectualism. The spread of ideas today requires an active presence in the
media. It is the means by which the public is educated, for better or worse.
The
age of the Internet means the audience has so much more power than those
before. Today’s audience can investigate background of a public intellectual
like Gladwell and verify or refute the claims in his or her work to make their
own decision as to whether or not that person is a public intellectual to whom
to listen. The Internet, in fact, has not only torn down the barriers between
the academia and the public, but also the public intellectual and the public.
[i] Grossman, Lev. "Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell's Success
Story." Time. Time, 13 Nov. 2008. Web. 10 Sept. 2012.
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858880,00.html>.
[ii] Preston, John. "Malcolm Gladwell." The
Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 25 Oct. 2009. Web. 10 Sept. 2012.
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/6416229/Malcolm-Gladwell-interview.html>.
[iii] Kakutani, Michiko. "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; It's True:
Success Succeeds, And Advantages Can Help." The New York Times. The
New York Times, 18 Nov. 2008. Web. 10 Sept. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/books/18kaku.html?_r=2>.
[iv] Ibid
[v] Ibid
[vi] Mack, Stephen. "The New Democratic Review: Are Public
Intellecuals a Thing of the Past? (Repost)." The New Democratic Review:
Are Public Intellecuals a Thing of the Past? (Repost). N.p., 14 Aug. 2012.
Web. 11 Sept. 2012.
<http://www.stephenmack.com/blog/archives/2012/08/are_public_inte.html>.
[vii] Epstein, Joseph. "Joseph Epstein." The Weekly
Standard. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2012.
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/joseph-epstein>.
[viii] Ibid
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