Who are the New Intellectuals?

A bit of holiday reading - John Brockman on the demise of the old literary intellectual and their replacement with...well, that's an interesting question and I'm not sure he has it right. I first read his book "The Third Culture" (in which he argued that there needs to be an intellectual culture that blends new thinking encompassing both science and liberal arts) some 15 years ago. In his view the traditional 20th Century "Intellectual" is intellectually redundant:

"Traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time."

He is talking about the (often proud) ignorance of science and technology (and I wouldn't limit it to Americans either - in fact in his Third Culture he had a good go at European intellectual tradition as well). Observing the chattering class British disdain of science (still largely prevalent today), I was somewhat sceptical that a 3rd Cuture would come tofruition anytime soon. And waching the rise of pseudo-scientific hokum movements from creationism to ..... since then has made me even less convinced.

So who does he believe the New Intellectuals are? Well, if his own books are anything to go by, he has assempled all the "writers of books" that have a scientific bent (rather than scientists per se). Well, being a publisher, he would, wouldn't he?

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy these sorts of writers hugely (Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, Jaron Lanier et al), but I do wonder if this is a bit akin to looking for lost keys under existing lamplights? Does being an Old Skool publisher lead to missing the point as much as an Olde Intellectuals does?

The one thing that has interested me is the last 5 years and the rise of the Blogosphere, where there has been a massive rise in people who, because they are not constrained by conventional limits, do cross these intelectual lines quite unconsciously and happily. The difficulty with the Blogosphere of course is that it is huge, chaotic mass and (as it gets easier and easier to use) increasingly polluted with pure cr*p so it is hard to find the good stuff at first.

But what has happened - big picture - is a rise of a very large volume of people putting new ideas together in new ways, so you ar awash with new thoughts. Let me give you an example - this week for the first time I heard of (and read a bit of the works of) Vaclav Smil (who also writes on the development of technology and energy over the last 100 years or so). Now here is the interesting thing (to me, anyway) - there was very little he has written that I didn't already know about by reading the blogs I do read in this space, and yet I had never heard of him - yet Bill Gates apparently hangs on his words.

The point I am making is that new ideas are now arising and disseminating in multiple channels, and the Blogosphere - distilled - is its own intellectual - as well as its own Hello! and Pseud's Corner and sheer Crap-o-Sphere (500 million people on Facebook and nothing on.....)

The problem going forward, in the arising tide of sheer noise that is the New Social Media, is finding them. The Web will need its John Brockman style publishers as much a Olde Media did.