I haven't read Glenn Reynold's "Army of Davids", in part because--well frankly I could have written the book. That being said, I could never have gotten it published, lacking Reynold's celebrity. But Both professionally and otherwise, I am one of the David's--have wireless connection, will travel.

For this reason, I found myself--well not exactly annoyed, but nevertheless shaking my head at a review in the Weekly Standard by Andrew Keen, who I also thought was off-the-mark with a previous column on Web 2.0.

Both articles reflect a penchant for citing obscure French intellectuals and Hobbesian (obscure English intellectual?) dread of the modern empowerment of the individual. Chaos will ensure and anarchy will be the order of the day without the order imposed by the Leviathan.

In Web 2.0, Keen poses that notorious Luddite (obscure English paleoconservatives?) query on technology--yes we can, but should we? Keen wants us to consider the ethical implications of enabling technologies that thrust a lecturn, a canvas, a broadsheet, a camera or a microphone into the hands of any who wish to avail themselves.

Of course, what he is really saying is that we should consider the ethical implications of the Marxist, flower-child future he draws for us. A future where the artistic and cultural acheivements of the masters are lost or fall on the deaf ears of narcissistic cultural morons.

Total unmitigated crap.

I really should be more sympathetic to the argument as someone with an appreciation for the value of tradition and the continuity provided by society's institutions, but this isn't a cheer for the barbarians to conquer Rome. Its the simple recognition that Keen doesn't know what he is talking about.

To put it succinctly, the new enabling technologies aren't about pulling down the exceptional until its all just one uniform landscape of mediocrity--its about news ways to discover excellence.

Its not about Marxism, its about Americanism, about the possibility for self-realization by the individual without the limiting factors of class. In fact, every single on of the thinkers Keen cites came from a culture that more fully exploited the human resources at their disposal than any other of their day. I submit that Lenardo da Vinci wasn't the creation of renaissance Italy, but that renaissance Italy was the creation of da Vinci and thousands and hundreds of thousands of exceptional people like him.

Unfortunately, as the exceptional becomes institutionalized, it inevitably calcifies and unable to avail itself of the very genius that gave it birth, slips beneath the waves of time.

This process is writ large all over the world's history. At the beginning of the 19th century, sailing ship technology reigned supreme, and so did the companies the had mastered it. Yet by the end of the century, all those companies had disappeared, replaced by new companies featuring steam-drive technology. The real question isn't why those steamship entrepreneurs had no respect for their betters, but why sail ship companies, flush with capital, sittiing astride the traderoutes of the world--failed to make the transition to steam power.

Society progresses in direct relationship to how well it exploits its human resources and the significance of the new enabling technologies is the unprecedented granularity with which it extends opportunity to virtually all members of the society. In essence, its the logical end-point of the American experiment: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But what of excellence?

In oh so many ways, this is the most bizarre of Keen's worries:

THE REVOLUTION, Glenn Reynolds promises in An Army of Davids might well be inevitable. Even shunting aside notions of exceptionalism and cultural excellence, the idea of personal empowerment wrapped up in Reynolds's man-without-walls worldview is certainly seductive. But it would do readers well to remember that revolutions have consequences.

Egads! The stunning cluelessness of his remark.

There are 30 million blogs according to Technorati's most recent count. 99.999% are never seen or read by anyone outside the author's immediate circle of friends. Those that are read are exceptional by virtue of market acceptance. No academic committee, no editorial board or any other political construct--just people voting with their eyeballs.

The simple reality of empowerment technologies is that they bypass the gatekeepers to allow the market to judge the product directly. Its not perfect, but even I am surprised at how well it actually does work. I strongly suspect that the new artistic, literary and cinematic elite will come from Web 2.0--it is in fact already happening.

Bloggers are all over cable news these days, and even this humble blog has been featured on three broadcasts that I know of (and I never even saw one of them myself...). Authors, both of fiction and non-fiction are also coming out of the blogging world. Increasingly, publishers are looking to promote candidates who already have proven themselves in the market and developed a following. Its a risk-management no-brainer.

Excellence was never in any danger--what is at peril are the power structures that used to arbitrarily dictate taste and popularity. I think we are through with designer pop stars, pointless remakes of King Kong and the Poseidon Adventure, Star Trek and Star Wars serialized novels (and movies)--we will simply regard the garden of a million flowers and pick the most breath-taking examples. Excellence will abound.