The Dilemma of Authority in 21st Century

Back in 1963, Stanly Milgram a psychologist from Yale shocked the world with his book "Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View".” In his study Milgram proved that people tend to obey an authority figureeven if the authority figure instructs them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience.

           The focus of this introduction is not to debate the topic of “Obedience to Authority”, the fact that people always follow an authority figure, but to establish it as an accepted fact that has been proved by behavioral sciences. The idea of my writing this is to point out how the idea of “Obedience to Authority” is wrapped around our society and how the internet challenges it today.
          Authority plays an integral role in our society. The authority lays down written laws, which are enforced upon other members of the society. Authority also influences the thinking of its members, a classic example would be an author influencing his readers or a teacher teaching (a form of influence) his students. The question of what makes an entity or organization an “authority” and how the roots of this authority is challenged today through Internet arises.

          We need to answer the question “ what is an authority?” In some very basic terms, authority is a group of individuals who control a seizable amount of power. Power can be gained through access to specific knowledge that is not available to others, the knowledge can range from speaking skills such as rhetoric to a professional understanding of markets and other things. Power can also be gained through one’s ability to influence other people or control over a medium that enables one to influence the masses. 

            However, in recent years it has been observed that there has been a trend where the power has shifted from the hands of few to those of the masses. This comes with the internet revolution and with the dawn of affordable electronic devices, which gives one immediate access to most of the knowledge banks in the world. Back in time, all these knowledge resources were available only to selected few. However, now through the platform of internet, an individual can challenge bigger cooperations, enterprises and other kinds of authority by raising his voice on this medium and getting in contact with like minded people and creating a mass opposition or gaining that certain type of knowledge which forms the advantage of the authority.

               Internet has unified individual units across the world and made them an authority in itself. The dawn of internet marks a crucial time in history because we are shifting towards  an era of prospering individual freedom. One might argue with my utopian view point but I am firm in my belief that the internet moment has not ended, but started and as new technologies such as tele-existance and more interactive social media platforms comes in future. There will be an even a greater shift towards unity. Meanwhile, what is an authority and what is not remains a dilemma.

Fig 1: An example of the Influence by Authority