(2021-03-23) News From Stripe Press Gurri

News from Stripe Press. This month, we spoke with Martin Gurri, author of The Revolt of the Public. In the wake of the recent short squeeze of GameStop stock, New York Times columnist Kevin Roose wrote that the book explores “how the internet has empowered ordinary citizens… to discover the flaws in the systems and institutions that govern their lives”—and underscored that Gurri’s thesis is now more relevant than ever.

Economist Arnold Kling credits you with “seeing it coming.” How do you navigate the line between being prescient and being perceived as a Cassandra?

My belief is that good analysis gives you as many perspectives around an issue as a single mind can hold

When these movements erupt, there is a numbers factor. [When] someone has got a million people on the street—you know that movement is for real. Then, you drill down to what they’re saying. A wonderful fact about the internet age for researchers is that [we] can get a direct idea of what these groups think they are doing. Then, you’ve got to match those ideas against what they’re actually doing. There are almost always mismatches

Can we really figure out who has authority on the internet? (expert)

These institutions are maladapted for what is happening to them informationally. It’s just turbulence.

we will come to a whole new understanding of what an authority figure is under the conditions of the digital world. My concern, of course, is that when that moment is reached, our freedoms and our democratic system [stay] intact.

if I were to have a tiny mission, it would be to make sure that when we get to that closing down of the authority question, our liberal democracy and personal freedoms are still there.