Andrew Keen told me that the one glaring omission from our list of public intellectuals was Arianna Huffington, the Greek-born socialite who is turning the US political media upside-down with her blog-cum-aggregator-cum-celebrity-gabfest the Huffington Post.
I didn't get it. After all, while the HuffPost may have a readership extending into the millions, and while it may even represent a serious threat to the future of the newspaper industry, how does this make its proprietor—who seems to change her mind more often than John Gray—worthy of the tag intellectual?
But in his portrait of Huffington in the new issue of Prospect, Keen suggests that we may be witnessing the emergence of a new kind of intellectual, one whose influence is measured not in terms of his or her ideas, but by the quality and extent of his or her personal network. And no one has a more powerful network than Arianna. Click here to read his piece in full, and let us know your thoughts below.
I didn't get it. After all, while the HuffPost may have a readership extending into the millions, and while it may even represent a serious threat to the future of the newspaper industry, how does this make its proprietor—who seems to change her mind more often than John Gray—worthy of the tag intellectual?
But in his portrait of Huffington in the new issue of Prospect, Keen suggests that we may be witnessing the emergence of a new kind of intellectual, one whose influence is measured not in terms of his or her ideas, but by the quality and extent of his or her personal network. And no one has a more powerful network than Arianna. Click here to read his piece in full, and let us know your thoughts below.
