Podcasting is taking off in the same way, and so is videocasting. The technology for producing a weblog or podcast is so inexpensive that you don’t need a massive audience to make it worthwhile, which is why Reynolds rewrites Andy Warhol to declare, "in the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people." But when several hundred relatively small blogs get together to take on a common, more powerful foe, the effect can be devastating. Ask Dan Rather.
But Reynolds’s thesis extends to much more than blogging, podcasting or “citizen media” in general. An Army of Davids also includes chapters on how unsigned and obscure musicians are making high-quality recordings inexpensively and using the internet to promote and distribute them around the world; how private companies and organizations like the X-Prize Foundation are gradually supplanting the bloated, stagnant NASA in moving ahead with space exploration; and even how nanotechnology — the manipulation of molecules and atoms — could be used to produce almost anything. Not only do you not have to be big or well-funded to change the way we do things, writes Reynolds, being big can be a disadvantage.
Personally, I don’t think we’ll see the end of the multinational corporation anytime soon. (Indeed, these days, pretty much any business will be multinational. Who would have predicted that one of the most popular means of online communication would come from Estonia?) And unfortunately, bloated bureaucracies may be with us forever.
Reynolds is often accused of being a "blog triumphalist," and there are several legitimate criticisms of his Army of Davids theory, most of them made effectively by Crooked Timber's Henry Farrell in a Cato Institute symposium (available as a podcast, and highly recommended as a supplement to the book). In particular, new technologies can give a leg-up to many individuals and small organizations and businesses, but that alone doesn't solve the problem of getting that technology to the poorest and most disadvantaged.
But the opportunities described by Reynolds sound exciting and revolutionary, and I can't wait to see how his theories play out. An Army of Davids is essential for anyone who regularly reads InstaPundit, and pretty darned interesting even for those who don't.
Article comments
1 - methuselah
The Army Of Davids will be followed by an Army Of Goliaths who will snatch Davids victory after he has paid the freight and shown the way. Already you can hear them knocking on the door: insisting that the government discriminate between David and Goliath on the internet by allowing Goliath a greater priority.
2 - Alvin Scotworth
Corporations/governments are control freaks, and hate freedom of, well, everything really. So when people start putting opinions, ideas, information etc on the internet, which is (for now) free, they get very annoyed and nervous. Unfortunately, the corporations/governments are getting more and more support, and therefore power, to take control of internet content. I'm seeing a lot of outspoken sites, and people, 'disappear', or quieten down lately. Hopefully, we can keep our diversity and freedom.
3 - Bliffle
"Corporations/governments are control freaks, and hate freedom of, well, everything really."
...
"Hopefully, we can keep our diversity and freedom."
I'm afraid the first precludes the second. If they are successful.