memyselfandhim

Public Intellectuals and Big Idea Books

Nathan Jurgenson, over at Cyborgology, has an interesting post where he laments what he fears may be a lack of public intellectuals doing rigorous work and/or a lack of academics having the ability to publish Big Idea books about technology that compete in the commercial marketplace (of ideas). My response is here:

What the Public Wants

1) Commercial publishers attempt to publish what they believe the public wants to read. They are not perfect at this of course, but that’s their goal. Meme Weaver, in the recent Atlantic, sheds some light on Jurgenson’s questions. To its point, I don’t see this as an issue of Internet/tech popular intellectuals vs Internet/tech scholars, but one of “what is the general public interested in” reading about. Commercial publishers are looking for a Big Idea book, that, generally, as the Atlantic piece said, has “an enthusiastically stated thesis, usually taking the form of “This changes everything and will make you rich, happy, and beautiful.”’ When the Atlantic writer’s book moved away from that angle to a more nebulous intellectual journey, his book contract was terminated. In some ways it seems what publishers/(presumably the public) wants - a soundbite idea on how to make more money or be happier or more self-actualized or whatever - is at odds with what the academy teaches as the notion of intellectual thought, i.e. the opposite of a soundbite. So it’s no wonder we are in the situation Jurgenson is talking about. With that said, thankfully, there are plenty of examples that are the exceptions to this rule. Carr’s “The Shallows” or “Shop Class As Soul Craft,” a book about the spiritual and intellectual value of hands on labor, written by a former think tanker - are examples, to me at least, of big, interesting ideas, backed by rigorous thought, sold successfully as popular books. Would they work as academic texts, perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean they’re not intellectual.

Public Intellectuals With a Small p

2) While there were, and still are, “public intellectuals,” I’d argue they’ve always been public with a small “p.” Susan Sontag was HUGE, and her books are still read by those in the academy and the occasional nerd like myself not in the academy. But even someone like her, ultimately, was relatively invisible to the general public. Yes, some of her ideas perhaps percolated through indirectly to the mainstream, but it’s not like the average Joe was thumbing through On Photography while sitting on the toilet. 

Public Intellectuals Aren’t Who We Think They Are

3) I suggest there are Public Intellectuals that academics could, and should, be proud of but they largely are not in the form Jurgenson likely is thinking of. I’d argue that Jonathan Franzen - by covering issues of technology, globalization, classism, environmentalism, and more - both with his fiction, and with some of his New Yorker pieces, is a public intellectual, even though he hasn’t written a Big Idea book. Perhaps some of the most intellectually rigorous, and publicly impactful thinkers are more in the arts than the world of business book peddlers. Jurgenson presumably agrees with this notion because he had artists included in the Theorizing the Web conference he chaired. At least in my own experience, I’m generally more intellectually inspired by sharp filmmakers and fictions writers than the latest Big Idea book. I’m not saying there aren’t some terrific Big Idea books that are rigorous and engaging at the same time (for a layperson) but, Jurgenson is right, more often than not they do seem to be subtly, or not, aimed at the business crowd. Which is shame, of course, that the framework within which the public is taught to think about big ideas is that their core must always be reduced to “how does this relate to me being more successful” in business or at obtaining a fictitious maximum happiness level. 

The Burden of Too Much Knowledge

4) Last, a point about academics writing popular books. As a non-academic who has lectured at a number of academic conferences, and read (or attempted to read) a number of academic books, I’ve found that a large majority of the lectures I attended at these conferences, which were nearly all by professors or grad students, were boring for me as a layperson. And I’m a layperson who is very far on the end of the nerdy academic spectrum. Among several common problems with them, they almost always seemed weighted down by referencing the heroes of their respective fields - McLuhan, Ong, Ellul for the media folks, Foucault et al for the sociologists, etc - rather than coming up with Big Ideas on their own. In a way it’s perhaps the curse of too much knowledge. I’ve been told more than once by professors who have seen me lecture or have read about my work that the reason it seems to be creating the buzz it has in the academy, and outside the academy, is precisely because I’m not an academic. I’ve been able to distill some new ideas down to a level that regular people instantly understand, yet also are intellectually rigorous enough that academics find them compelling. As one communications professor said to me when I asked him why he and some of his colleagues were so supportive of my work, if I was in the academy, with years of training and research on all the giants, I’d likely not have been able to frame my ideas in the fresh way I have done. Anecdotally at least, from my time at many conferences, this certainly seems to be the case. To be clear, I’m not saying there aren’t academics with big, fresh, ideas, but by and large it seems most thinkers may need to be outside the ivory tower’s conventional framework of study, perhaps, to think of, or at least frame things in a perspective that is engaging and new enough to both have the respect of academics yet also connect with a larger audience.