Bri­tan­nica, the end of an era and the evo­lu­tion of authority

My fam­ily lives on Lake Shore Drive, just east of Lake­view, a Chicago neigh­bor­hood that is known for mobil­ity in every dimen­sion. Con­se­quently, one is accus­tomed to see­ing all man­ner of aban­doned flot­sam and jet­sam along Aldine and Roscoe avenues, even when not really pay­ing atten­tion. Many a stroll presents once-significant objects that don’t make the move, their value deemed less than the cost of mov­ing or even donat­ing them. Return­ing from the neigh­bor­hood gro­cer recently, I saw this paragon of author­ity stand­ing tall, per­haps not real­iz­ing its new status.

Pub­lish­ing

As I approached, I expected the spines of this tower to reveal some Reader’s Digest collector’s edi­tion. How­ever, as I approached, I thought I rec­og­nized some­thing else (click to enlarge). In dis­be­lief, the famil­iar spines came into a focus that didn’t lie: the Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­nica, once the dream of fam­i­lies and a jeal­ously hoarded jewel of libaries’ ref­er­ence col­lec­tions, was marooned by the road­side, appar­ently too worth­less to merit space on the book­shelf any longer.

It is one thing to ref­er­ence, as I often have in good com­pany dur­ing Web 1.0, the com­par­i­son of Bri­tan­nica with Encarta and now, in the throes of Web 2.0, with Wikipedia. These are well ban­tered facts. It is another thing alto­gether to see a com­plete set of books for which the for­mer owner likely paid $3,000-$4,000 USD lit­ter­ing the curb­side. Arrest­ing for me, as I have used Bri­tan­nica for many a research project: the arti­cles them­selves were uni­formly excel­lent, and the bib­li­ogra­phies yielded more treasures.

I am sur­prised at how I am still reel­ing from its stark appari­tion. Mourning.

Remem­ber, too, that both of Chicago’s once-famous dailies, the Chicago Tri­bune and the Chicago Sun-Times, filed for bank­ruptcy in 2008. They are being joined by news­pa­pers around the coun­try. Truly an epi­taph of two pub­lish­ing mod­els that once stood for author­ity and country.

Author­ity

The decen­tral­iza­tion of com­put­ing has mor­phed into the Internet’s infra­struc­ture, which is increas­ingly known as “the cloud.” These dis­trib­uted pro­cess­ing and stor­age resources form the infra­struc­ture of The Knowl­edge Econ­omy. Evo­lu­tion is also dis­trib­ut­ing author­ity, which is increas­ingly estab­lished by inter­act­ing with “the crowd” rather than hav­ing hier­ar­chial pow­ers con­trol infor­ma­tion cre­ation and distribution.

As The Long Tail aptly chron­i­cles, the means of pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion, which hereto­fore were cap­i­tal inten­sive, are now essen­tially free and in the hands of ordi­nary cit­i­zens. The dom­i­nance of the producer-consumer rhythm is dis­solv­ing fast.

Syn­the­sis

Where does this leave pub­lish­ing and author­ity? Clearly, most pub­lish­ing lead­ers do not know, and the mar­ket is a stern taskmas­ter. As a rec­og­nized advi­sor on Web 2.0 and social net­works, I have been party to numer­ous con­ver­sa­tions in which hue and cry ensued: “Blog­gers say any­thing they want and have no code of ethics, and they are destroy­ing our news­pa­pers…” It is nat­ural to regret the appear­ance of an antithe­sis to a vir­tu­ous the­sis like Bri­tan­nica or the Chicago Tri­bune, but the antithe­sis sim­ply chal­lenges and proves the irrel­e­vance of some­thing that has out­lived its use­ful­ness. But let’s not mis­take the antithe­sis for a new the­sis: blog­gers will not “replace” news­pa­pers per se.

The syn­the­sis seems quite clear. Exper­tise is being reor­ga­nized, and orga­ni­za­tion is increas­ingly emer­gent. Col­lab­o­ra­tion among actors with var­i­ous roles will become dom­i­nant in many sit­u­a­tions. Here is a very short list:

• ProAms — Col­lab­o­ra­tion among Pro­fes­sion­als and Ama­teurs is pro­duc­ing fan­tas­tic results in astronomy
• OhmyNews, an excep­tion­ally pop­u­lar news­pa­per in South Korea, 80 per­cent of whose con­tent is writ­ten by citizens
• Wikipedia needs no intro­duc­tion nor hyperlink ‚^)

Part­ing shots

• For the last sev­eral years, I have used Bri­tan­nica online along­side Wikipedia. Last year, I allowed my Bri­tan­nica sub­scrip­tion to lapse because it too rarely had arti­cles on sub­jects I was seek­ing. Yes, Wikipedia’s arti­cles are of uneven qual­ity, but they are usu­ally rel­e­vant, and some are amaz­ing; they often have solid links as well. I can add to them, and I do.
• You cer­tainly noted the irony above in which I linked to Britannica’s entry in Wikipedia; unfor­tu­nately, the other way ’round is less easy.
• Can I take pic­tures as well as a pol­ished news­pa­per pho­to­jour­nal­ist or write as well as a trained reporter? Cer­tainly not. But I — and we — are every­where, and we work for free. By com­bin­ing ama­teurs and pro­fes­sion­als, we can pro­duce high qual­ity at a far lower price. Pub­lish­ers that rec­og­nize this and act on it will thrive, and I wager that qual­ity will even be supe­rior in many cases, once peo­ple under­stand the ProAm con­cept and its best prac­tices emerge.
• The Indus­trial Econ­omy fea­tured a pater­nal­is­tic sys­tem in which the “com­mon man” was a minor actor and a con­sumer. In the U.S., this has had dis­as­trous results because peo­ple also con­sume media: cit­i­zen aware­ness and capac­ity for inde­pen­dent think­ing has been falling pre­cip­i­tously for decades.
• Cre­at­ing con­tent is more active and can moti­vate peo­ple to take more charge of their des­tiny. Of course, there will also be dis­as­ters and mis­takes as with all human endeavor, includ­ing old-style pub­lish­ers (recall the Tribune’s head­line of Truman’s defeat at the hands of Dewey?)
• Com­pa­nies will only thrive by invit­ing cus­tomers and their publics to get actively involved in per­va­sive innovation.
• For related thoughts, I highly rec­om­mend David Weinberger’s Trans­parency is the New Objec­tiv­ity.
• Tomb­stones are mile­stones. What do you think?

Christo­pher S. Rollyson is man­ag­ing direc­tor of CSRA, a man­age­ment con­sul­tancy that advises enter­prises and star­tups on Web 2.0 strat­egy. He is also edi­tor of the Global Human Cap­i­tal Jour­nal and Founder of the Executive’s Guide to Web 2.0. See his pro­file, con­tact Chris or leave a com­ment below.