The Revolt of the Public

We are awash in information. Insight, on the other hand, is a much rarer commodity.

I recently finished Martin Gurri’s book The Revolt of the Public. Gurri claims we are living through the early stages of a seismic shift in the balance of power that will transform society as we know it. 

That got my attention.

He claims this power shift has two facets: The first concerns information. The second is about how power is distributed. 

The fact that we live in an information age isn’t news to anyone. The new idea for me was how this is impacting power hierarchies. 

Knowledge, of course, is power. Throughout history, information was tightly controlled by the ruling class. The invention of the printing press changed that, giving the masses direct access to knowledge and information. Broadened dissemination of information enabled the industrial and scientific revolutions. Information access facilitated by the internet is even more revolutionary, but with an unanticipated side effect. 

Top-down institutional power is rapidly fraying. 

Radio stations or record companies formerly decided what music we listened to. Now, we go to Spotify or YouTube, where anyone can post a song. 

Network TV broadcasts formerly determined what we watched. Now, we stream whatever interests us. 

Mainstream media formerly controlled the news. Newsfeeds now come in countless flavors custom fit to our particular biases.

Democratized information shifts power from top-down hierarchies to horizontal networks. Gurri believes we underestimate this impact. The change we are witnessing came in through the back door. Here’s what I mean by that:

It’s cool to carry around a million songs in my pocket. 

It’s cool to select the news I want to see. 

It’s cool to buy anything I want from my couch.

It’s cool to visit a Doctor without leaving my home. 

As with everything, however, there’s the law of unintended consequences. Gurri says we have entered a new wild west, what he calls The Revolt of the Public. This revolt pits hierarchy against networks and has accelerated the decline in institutional trust. 

The Gallup organization bears this out in the chart below, which tracks public trust in nine major institutions. The long-term trend was already drifting downward. Now, it’s accelerating.

The public has lost faith in the very institutions that used to make sense of the world. Gurri’s thesis tracks the dysfunction we are witnessing in government. “Our current struggle is characterized by a collision between a public that will not rule (pure negation) and institutional authority that is progressively less able to rule.” 

The revolt of the public extends to sources of truth. Increasingly, individuals decide what is true for themselves and their families. Take, for example, the CDC (Centers For Disease Control). Until recently, people trusted the CDC to determine the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Now, it seems people decide for themselves.  

Reading Gurri’s book, I was struck with a conundrum. If one believes in democracy, then what is the issue with power shifting to the public? It’s a difficult question to answer, especially in an election year when craziness is escalating. 

Change is coming more rapidly than we expect. Artificial intelligence will ensure that. I’ve never been a big fan of large institutions, but anarchy is worse. 

Just before my Dad passed, he told me he was glad he wouldn’t be around to see the car go over the cliff. 

I’m more optimistic than Dad, but I’m starting to relate.

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