It's Not Easy Being Clever

Some of the perceived big clever thinkers of the world probably don't like the phrase 'social media.' For people like Will Hutton, the former editor of The Observer and high profile UK political, media is becoming anything but.

Once Will simply submitted his 1,000 word think piece on a Friday for Sunday's paper, sat back and enjoyed his weekend. Now pressing 'publish' is just the start for the poor man. Look what happened when Will brought the subject of rural China and India's gender gap to his readers this Sunday. The comments - or rather challenges - go on and on and on.

One of the great lofty hopes of social media - for me anyway - is that we are watching the crumbling of intellectual elites. The big society-shifting ideas are no use on paper or in someone's head, they need to be exposed, and ultimately executed. Social media - one would hope - will allow bigger ideas see the light of day, to be embraced and executed. Ideas will be less reliant on position, access, influence or privilege to bear fruit.

As society gets to grip with technology, maybe we are shifting to an era of intellectual meritocracy. A sort of intellectual version of Digg? Naive, I know. Open to abuse - for sure. But intellectual meritocracy is an attractive thought. Especially if it means well-paid journalisyts have to be work that little bit harder.