Yesterday, I asked “Why are you reading this blog entry”. I received several comments that I found particularly heartening. People were interested in “uncovering new ideas”. This is in distinct contrast to the concern that so many people have expressed. EPIC 2014 ends with a comment about “EPIC is merely a collection of trivia, much of it untrue, all of it narrow, shallow and sensational.” This reflects a concern about citizen journalism, social media and the general direction of the Web that many people fear.

Andrew Keen takes up this theme in his book, the cult of the amateur. He talks about attending FOO camp which he describes as “a beta version of the Web 2.0 revolution” where “Everyone was simultaneously broadcasting themselves, but nobody was listening.” This comment particularly resonates with me. I often talk about how everyone wants to be heard, and no one wants to listen.

However, EPIC 2014 goes on to say, “It didn’t have to be this way” and it seems as if, at least from the responses I’ve been getting, it isn’t that way. Indeed, most of us are well enough socialized to listen to those around us, whether we are at a party or on the web.

Keen goes on to say, “The more that was said that weekend, the less I wanted to express myself. As the din of narcissism swelled, I became increasingly silent.” As therapist friends of mine are want to say, “Methinks he dost protest too much.” He certainly hasn’t been silent in writing or promoting the book. I have to wonder whose narcissism swelled and was injured.

Years ago, I attended various Group Relations Conferences. To use the language from the Group Relations Conference website where they describe a conference last May, as group relations conference is “an experiential conference in the Tavistock Tradition… designed for individuals who wish to study the exercise of authority in groups and understand more about their own reactions to exercising and encountering authority”

The ability for anyone to publish online challenges the some of the traditional authority structures and sources of authority. It seems as if this is what bothers Mr. Keen so much.

Through the MyBlogLog community, I stumbled across a way to virally promote the ‘authority’ of your blog, at least according to Technorati. Technorati views authority in terms of the number of people linking to your blog. This isn’t particularly a new idea. Authority in the academic world is based, at least in part, on how many people reference what you have written in their articles. A difference is that those articles typically undergo peer review before being published so it is more difficult to game the system the way the virally linking is gaming the Technorati system.

So, we have new communication tools which provide new ways of looking at, understanding and attempting to establish authority. We have authors like Andrew Keen trying to defend older methods of controlling who has authority. Perhaps what we really need are more people exploring the group relations’ tradition to better understand their own reactions to authority, especially as it now manifests itself online.

So, let me end this with a question for any readers that still remain. How do you experience authority online, both the authority of others, and your own authority? How do you determine the authority of websites you visit? How do you attempt to establish your own authority? And, to use the over used psychological cliché, how does it make you feel?