David Brooks: The medium is the message

David Brooks finds that the broader culture has finally definitively caught up with Marshall McLuhan:

But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.

On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.

Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)

Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.

This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem -- Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.

These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.

This passage made me realize that aside from writers of Big Books who provide the foundation for the way I see the world, the people who are most responsible for my day-to-day take are Ross Douthat, Andrew Sullivan, Daniel Larison, James Poulos and the other six or seven bloggers whose work I read several times daily. Why? It's not because I always agree with them (indeed, I probably disagree with Andrew as much if not more than I agree with him). It's that I always find that these bloggers are paying attention to the stuff that's important, or at least interesting, to know. I want to know what they're thinking about, possibly even more than what they think about it. They have more authority to me than does The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, Fox News, ABC, and all the rest.

Note well that none of these bloggers has a regular column in an old media outlet with wide circulation (the niche magazines they write for don't count; Andrew's Times of London column doesn't appear in this country, except on the Internet, of course). Their authority is made possible because of technology -- the Internet. It's important not to oversell this: I have a pretty good idea of what Andrew's page view numbers are in a given month, and far more eyes see the Times, the DMN and network news each month.

But bloggers like Andrew, Ross and the gang are disproportionately influential because of the kind of elite audience they attract. Most journalists I know on the left and the right read Andrew. Most conservatives 45 and under I talk to about ideas and issues read Ross, Daniel and James -- especially if they're in the media, in publishing or in some other profession that involves working with and transmitting ideas. I don't think I know many people at all who talk about MSM journalists, unless authoritative bloggers like these guys have first brought up a column or something the MSM journo has penned. When I was in journalism school, I wouldn't have missed a George F. Will column; now, I'm real hit or miss about checking in with Will on my own, and usually read him only because a blogger I like has found something he has to say interesting or important.

It's not that Will has gotten worse. He's as good as he ever was (or as bad, depending on your POV). It's that there's only so much time in the day, and there's vastly more information out there. Besides, the content of what Larison (for example) says on any given issue is likely to be more thought-provoking and consensus-challenging than anything an old-media pundit is likely to say.

Interestingly, of the bloggers I mention in this post, all but Daniel live and work in Washington. It would be a good thing if Internet technology decentralized the punditocracy. But old media and its habits are far from passe'. Smart, engaged young people still gravitate to the old places, at least for now. If you are an ambitious young intellectual with writing chops, no place beats Washington for opportunity to make your name and your mark, and where you can easily find a real-time community of intellectuals with whom to socialize and to engage. This hasn't changed, and I don't see it changing. Alas.