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It was the contemporary equivalent of being publicly branded a fascist. “You, sir,” Stephen Colbert announced on his hit show The Colbert Report, pointing an accusatory finger at me, “You are an elitist, sir.”

What was behind Colbert’s denouncement? It was the notion that I, as author of the controversial Cult of the Amateur, had suggested that we are better off trusting the expert journalists of traditional mass media than the user-generated opinion of the contemporary “Web 2.0” internet. My book exposes the digital emperor’s absence of clothing. I argue that Web 2.0’s gatekeeper-free media—without professional fact checkers, grammarians, and publishers—is by definition less accurate, reliable, and honest than professionally edited newspapers, encyclopedias, or books.

Of course, it seems as though the real Stephen Colbert—the professional satirist who, I suspect, shares my “elitist” values—was only joking. For many less-humorous digital utopians, however, the idea that amateurs are more trustworthy than conventional experts is no laughing matter.

Jimmy Wales, for example, the radical libertarian founder of the open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia, has stated publicly that he doesn’t trust the knowledge of a Harvard professor any more than the knowledge of a high school kid. Wales simply doesn’t believe in the authority of the established experts. Thus Wales’ brainchild, Wikipedia, rejects all forms of intellectual hierarchy. On Wikipedia, no contributor—whatever his or her credentials or accomplishments—has any more authority than any other. This means that a five-year-old child can not only “correct” the entry of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist but can also anonymously challenge the authority of that scientist in one of Wikipedia’s online “editorial” meeting rooms.

This “democratization” of intellectual authority isn’t just limited to Wikipedia. You can find the same flattening of traditional creative and informational hierarchies on social media websites such as YouTube, Digg, MySpace, and throughout the cacophonous chaos of the blogosphere. Both the beauty and the ugliness of Web 2.0’s technology is that it empowers anyone to publish anything on the internet. We really are all journalists and writers and filmmakers now—which means, in practice, that genuinely valuable journalism and writing get lost in all the self-authored junk on the internet.

But this radical democratization of media doesn’t conform to my idea of a glorious revolution. In contrast with the digital levelers, I’ll always trust the expertise of a Harvard professor over an anonymous blogger or a high school Wikipedia editor. And if that makes me a believer in an elitist meritocracy, then so be it.

“Yes, I am an elitist,” I thus responded to Stephen Colbert’s grenade of a question on national television. “What’s wrong with that?”

And what, indeed, is wrong with that? What’s wrong with trusting professionals over amateurs, and experts over dabblers? What’s wrong with believing in the wisdom of the intellectually fully finished Harvard professor more than the inchoate wisdom of the teenager?

This is, of course, an age-old question which has always intrigued philosophers of knowledge. What, exactly, is expertise? What distinguishes the amateur from the professional? How are we to know that what the professional “expert” claims to know is actually more reliable, more authoritative, more truthful than what the amateur enthusiast claims to know?

“But isn’t the difference between the know-nothing and the professional obvious?” many of us—particularly those in professional associations—would intuitively respond, citing some combination of academic degrees, professional qualifications, credentials, a track record of research, and lifelong work experience as self-evident proof.

The typical Web 2.0 ideologue would, of course, strongly disagree with such age-old common sense. “Who are they to tell us what we should and shouldn’t believe? These elites are biased; they are self-interested; they are corrupt,” one Silicon Valley techno-utopian, a rabidly antiauthoritarian software entrepreneur, recently lectured me. “Web 2.0 will sweep them and their archaic system away. It represents the birth of something real, something authentic. Technology is liberating us from these structures of power. It is empowering all of us to be everything that we can be.”

Be all you can be. We’ve heard it all before, of course—from the hippies, the market fundamentalists, the web 1.0 boosters of the nineties. Some of this is simply knee-jerk cultural relativism, a vulgar “everything is miscellaneous” message pilfered from the more intelligible postmodernists. Some of it is a libertarian assault against all forms of traditional political, cultural, and intellectual authority. Some of it is a counter enlightenment cult of innocence that implies, Jimmy Wales style, that the less you know, the more you know. And some of it is a neo-Marxist critique of the “ruling class,” sneaked in through the digital backdoor and replete with recycled arguments about the ethnic, sexual, gender, racial, and cultural injustices of contemporary America.

So the truth about this Web 2.0 debate between Silicon Valley techno-utopians and techno-skeptics like me is that it’s not really about technology. These enabling technologies have simply reopened America’s old wounds about the role and meaning of intellectual authority, economic privilege, social class, cultural authority, and political power. The debate about the value of social media is really a conversation about the legitimacy of our free-market meritocracy. These are troublesome and sometimes troubling cultural and political issues that have always bubbled beneath the surface of American intellectual life. Therefore, this is not really a conversation about Web 2.0; instead, it’s the continuation of a much older argument: the Federalist Debates 2.0, perhaps, or the Sixties 2.0.

So, in the midst of this cultural upheaval, how should leaders of traditional associations, those conventional brokers of knowledge (let’s call them “Associations 1.0”), respond to the Web 2.0 revolution? Like it or not, Associations 1.0 are on the front lines of the social media war. They are, by definition, curators of exclusivity in a new-media world that currently defines itself in militantly inclusive terms. Associations 1.0 limit membership according to professional, educational, or some other quantifiably meritocratic criteria. If Web 2.0 technologies enable anyone to publish anything on the internet, then the very raison-d’être of associations is undermined; after all, once anyone can join an association, then it no longer is one. Indeed, Web 2.0’s assault on the exclusivity of mainstream media is itself a case study in the destruction of a classic association.

My first impulse is Updikian. Last year, a visibly irate John Updike spoke about the threat of the digital revolution to booksellers at the Book Expo America event in Washington, DC. Stick to your principles, Updike told booksellers under threat from something called the “liquid book” (a social media version of the traditional standalone text).

"Booksellers, defend your lonely forts,” the old man of letters challenged his audience. “Keep your edges dry. Your edges are our edges. For some of us, books are intrinsic to our human identity.”

So, yes, association leaders, defend your lonely forts! Like the physical book, expertise is intrinsic to our human identity. Don’t be ashamed by the educational accomplishments, the meritocratic exclusivity, the hard-earned authority of your associations. Don’t lower your drawbridge to the undercredentialed and overopinionated masses. Don’t compromise with the mediocrity of the ill informed. Protect Associations 1.0 to the death!

First impulses, however, aren’t always entirely wise. Much as I am in awe of John Updike’s Luddite bravado, I’m not convinced that defending one’s lonely fort against technological progress is the most sensible advice in our networked age. Like it or not, social media is a reality—probably the reality in today’s increasingly techno-saturated culture. Whether or not one approves of wikis, blogs, and the other digital tools of social media, they are becoming the key ways in which all of us—Harvard professors and adolescents alike—distribute and acquire our information. So leaders of associations that pursue the counter-revolutionary Updikian option and completely reject the social media revolution are likely to be remembered as Canute 2.0 or Custer 2.0.

So what to do? How can associations, which claim to represent intellectual authority, compete in a flattened media world in which anyone can author any rubbish and distribute their “content” globally to an audience of millions? How can we maintain the credibility of the expert in an age in which a five-year-old preschooler can legitimately edit the work of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist?

Ironically, the answer is not to defend one’s fort but to use Web 2.0’s digital tools to rebuild that fort in order to make ourselves more secure against the ill informed and overopinionated. Let’s call it a Fort 2.0 for an Association 2.0.

This model is already being forced onto newspapers, music companies, and publishers. Today, mainstream media is faced with a simple alternative: Change or die. Many newspapers will indeed be killed by the free information on the blogosphere and the free classified advertisements on Craigslist. But the smart newspapers are adapting to the realities of the Web 2.0 world. Papers such as the London Guardian and The New York Times are combining their traditionally authoritative, high-quality, reliable journalism with forums for user-generated content and comment.  Moreover, these newspapers are arming their journalists with blogging software to make their work more immediate for their increasingly global audiences. And their strategy is working, both intellectually and commercially. The now-profitable online London Guardian, for example, has more American readers than many domestic newspapers.

The success of the online Guardian, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal demonstrates that there remains a strong public preference for credible expertise over flatulent opinion. The wisdom of the crowd is that the crowd isn’t always particularly wise. This is good news for association executives struggling to reestablish the role of their organizations as reliable knowledge and information brokers. Association leaders need to build easy-to-navigate, simple websites that clearly advertise the intellectual credibility of the association. The truth is that people still want to be enlightened by real experts. And Web 2.0—with its easy-to-use and cheap publishing tools—is an ideal platform for this type of enlightenment.

Rather than amateurs and amateurism, the digital future may actually belong to experts and expertise. Authoritative groups and companies are increasingly using Web 2.0 tools to promote themselves. Indeed, I suspect that conventional expertise and the curation of talent will become Silicon Valley’s “new” new thing in 2008. The site Mahalo.com is a new search engine curated by paid professionals who are trained in the reliable management of search information. HowStuffWorks.com is an intriguing new web platform that allows experts to distribute their knowledge online. DoneRight.com is a new consumer resource that provides consumers with reliably filtered information about home improvements.

Leaders of associations need to take note of such successful online publishing ventures as the Guardian and professionally curated search engines such as Mahalo.com and DoneRight.com. Associations need to resist the siren song of the digital utopians, with their seductive promises about the democratization of expertise. Rather than apologizing for their exclusivity, association managers should recognize that their networks of experts will be the next big thing. No guilt required: Expertise is about to become very sexy.

And, of course, Web 2.0 is actually a wonderful platform for associations. Separated from the distasteful utopian ideology of its more radical Silicon Valley boosters, the internet’s latest self-publishing technology actually offers traditional associations a rich array of publishing tools with which to arm their members. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and videocasts are, in themselves, neutral tools (blogs don’t kill culture; bloggers kill culture). In the paws of noisily opinionated amateurs, these tools are culturally corrosive; put them in the cultivated hands of traditional experts, however, and these instruments of self-publishing can be incredibly valuable ways of articulating and disseminating credible information about science, technology, and the arts. Rather than a fort, these tools can be pedagogical and informational bridges for experts to the outside world. Better still, they can be used to create significant revenue for self-employed experts in everything from high school tutoring to online classes about massage, cooking, or home improvements.

Nor does social media necessarily have to become an agent of cultural flattening in which networks inevitably degenerate into the adolescent narcissism of MySpace or Facebook. Associations can and should establish their own exclusive social media networks in which members can communicate with one another within a secure environment. But there is no reason to make these networks open to any digital Tom, Dick, or Harry. Association managers certainly shouldn’t be intimidated by the open-source pietists who assume there is something intrinsically just about the digital commons. The privacy of property—physical or virtual—is the cornerstone of our free-market economy. Just as I don’t want uninvited strangers tramping through my house, there’s no reason why you should want the uninitiated or the unskilled wandering into your association through your website or blog.

So, yes, Mr. Colbert, sir, I am indeed an elitist. I believe in a meritocracy in which our individual worth is valued by our professional accomplishments. Web 2.0 technologies can be both a fort and a bridge for strengthening the intellectual authority and commercial viability of traditional experts. Association managers should simultaneously embrace these tools of the digital revolution and reject the radical democratizing ideology of Silicon Valley’s digital utopians. The former empowers experts; the latter empowers the mob.

Andrew Keen is author of The Cult of the Amateur:How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture. Email: ak@aftertv.com

More Articles From Associations Now, November 2007

  The Digital Emperor Has No Clothes

  Who's in Charge?

  Paper Cuts

  Before You Lay Down The Law...

  What Would Drucker Do?

  The Ultimate Roundtable

  SOCIAL MEDIA SUPPLEMENT: Everything Is Connected

  SOCIAL MEDIA SUPPLEMENT: A World of Choices

  SOCIAL MEDIA SUPPLEMENT: Net Gains

  SOCIAL MEDIA SUPPLEMENT: Measuring Social Media

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