15 minutes of fame

The year was 1968 when Andy Warhol predicted the future:

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

50 years later, in the world dominated by social media, influencers, and marketing strategies, this could not be truer.

Well, everyone’s part might be a bit of an exaggeration. But maybe, we’re just not there yet.

To get an idea out into today’s world might seem more accessible than ever. You can just tweet it.

Catch is, of course, everyone can and is tweeting their ideas. Meaning, in the vast echo chamber, this seemingly open field of communication that internet offers, ideas get suffocated by millions of other purposes.

Formation

Everyone is qualified enough to get their ideas out, and all are equal. Just those more popular get more influential.

This equality principle is not that simple when it comes to academia. The process of getting “good enough” in academic writing is very long. By the time one receives the opportunity to write in a renown publication, his knowledge is already highly intertwined with his formation. The socialization part of the education.

The most influential ideas are those most worked on, thought through, and commented on.

The way this shapes the thinking process of a scientist helps him, or her develop a certain grab on the field they are dealing with. The way they work helps ideas develop further. It produces many possible questions that influence the world. The questions are, how does this work? How can something be improved, and why?

Popularity contest also helps to shape the ideas in a certain way. But the bottom-line question is how to develop them in a way that it would be easiest to get them out. How to make them more accessible?

The angle changes. At this point, I’m ambivalent about what this means.

Whether this is good or bad or just is what it is. Whatever it is.

It probably was a bit like this since forever. It probably will change in the future regarding the impact of technology on every field of human life.

Repetition

A French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote a book on how power and/or popularity struggle help things keep the way they are. His book Homo Academicus vividly and with extreme details describes the relations in the academy.

One of his arguments was that the most influential ideas in academia usually come from people with not an important position in a hierarchical structure.

The significant breakthroughs happen no matter what, and that is something different from fighting for the top spot.

The later is a matter of repetition. Most popular ideas aren’t too new.

If they were too out there, no one would get them or connect with them or recognize them as relevant.

The most popular ideas are versions of something existent, repackaged in a pleasant wrap, or just plainly repeated.

Scientific thought, on the other hand, is meant to find something new on the unknown. Which is not popular but highly needed.