We Want Media

Among the myriad things the internet has accomplished, surely one of the best is the peeling away of the layers between influential thinkers and their audience. Whereas in the past one has had to rely on magazines and newspaper articles to disseminate (and inevitably filter) ideas from the intellectual giants of our age, nowadays we can have access to these people directly.

Exhibit A in this phenomenon is the Becker-Posner Blog, a weblog put together by two University of Chicago professors, Gary Becker and Judge Richard Posner. Becker is a Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist and Posner is an esteemed judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and one of the founding fathers of the so-called “law and economics” movement.

Several times a month these two will pick an issue and explore it from an economics angle (think Freakonomics, but bite-sized). Recently they have taken on the U.S. News & World Report rankings, using genetic testing as a basis for employment and insurance, and the desirability of permitting the selection of a child’s sex before birth.

It makes for interesting reading, and perhaps is a taste of things to come, as one more formerly crucial role of the mainstream media is made obsolete.