When politicians run back and forth overseas to discuss pressing world problems, the press says that there was a “flurry of diplomatic activity.” In the case of Israel and Iran, there are many who believe that “flurry” will turn into a full-blown blizzard (with a subsequent “nuclear winter?”).

Like everything else in our wired world, the business of predicting has been taken over by “the experts” – in this case, the prediction markets, who use “The Wisdom of Crowds” to figure out the future. For example, right now at Intrade, which runs prediction markets for almost anything, from politics to wine vintages, has two Israel-related topics right now: Will Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist (nobody seems to think so) and if Israel or the US will attack Iran.

On the latter question, the predictions are all over the place, depending on which site you look at. The folks at Hubdub seem to think so, while at Intrade, they’re not so sure. Inkling users are much more optimistic that no war will take place. And at StrategyPage, where the watchword is “many minds make quick work of uncertainty,” the many minds don’t even believe that Iran is anywhere close to obtaining nuclear weapons! (They’re pretty bullish on gold, though – I guess they didn’t read my post questioning the whole gold mania thing).

So, is there wisdom in crowds? Most definitely, say people who know the business – such as Noam Danon of Qmarkets, and Israeli company that provides prediction network technology to small and medium sized businesses. I interviewed Danon last summer for Israeli21C, and he told me about the dozens of large corporations using them to set business policy – very successfully. As he says:

“Over the past four or five years, prediction markets have become a buzzword in many large organizations; Google, HP, Nokia, Siemens, the Best Buy retail chain, and many others use them to get an idea of where they should be investing their time and money. All those companies have large departments that specialize in working out prediction markets within the organization.”

Why would prediction markets give an accurate forecast for businesses, but not for Middle East conflicts? Obviously, money is a big motivator – when you have to decide how and where to invest assets, you are going to take the whole prediction process far more seriously. As far as Israel and Iran are concerned, the speculation either way could indicate that people look at the issue academically – after all, there have been no nuclear attacks since World War II, and it seem inconceivable that anyone would want to go down in history as being behind the next one (even the Iranians, North Koreans and Pakistanis, apparently). That, it seems to me, is the verdict of the crowd – with guaranteed MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) if Iran threatens/attacks Israel and/or vice-versa, both sides are doing a lot of “blustering” (another weather word!). Let’s hope the crowd is right on this one!

Thanks to the internet, we can share our most intimate ideas and thoughts with people all over the world. With Twitter, the privilege of getting thousands (or tens of thousands) of people to check out what you think is important in life is accelerated and democratized even further, since you don’t even have to bother with a blog if you want to reach “your public.” In a sense, we’re all celebrities now – just like Tom Wolfe predicted forty years ago, in the midst of the “Me Decade.”

That term, so closely associated with the 1970s, came from the name of an article Wolfe wrote for New York Magazine (it’s a great story, and if you’ve never read it, click on the link!). The article investigated some of the (then) new phenomena that really took hold during that decade – things like religious and secular cults, the sexual revolution, huge divorce rates, and the first stirrings of Christian “Moral Majority” style politics. Wolfe traces these developments to the Sixties, but by the mid-Seventies, they were part of the mainstream, no longer reserved for the hippies.

Americans have always been rugged individualists, and during the Seventies, Wolfe says, they took that individualism and combined it with the money they earned during the (then) “Thirty Year Boom” after World War II to start engaging in activities previously reserved only for the rich and powerful – namely,

“remaking, remodeling, elevating, and polishing one’s very self . . . and observing, studying, and doting on it. (Me!) This had always been an aristocratic luxury, confined throughout most of history to the life of the courts, since only the very wealthiest classes had the free time and the surplus income to dwell upon this sweetest and vainest of pastimes.”

In other words, all Americans could now become part of that class of aristocrats who could see

“my life becoming a drama with universal significance . . . analyzed, like Hamlet’s, for what it signifies for the rest of mankind.”

Wolfe called the new attitude to “Me” the “Third Great Awakening,” comparing it to previous religious movements that changed the face of the world. The “liberation of the self” was a kind of religious movement – it was the liberation of the repressed who for so long had been treated like “the proletariat” by their self-proclaimed social betters. Now, everyone was important, said Wolfe – it was the logical end-product of democracy.

At the end of the article, Wolfe asks:

“Where the Third Great Awakening will lead—who can presume to say? One only knows that the great religious waves have a momentum all their own.”

A great question, at the time, and Wolfe’s article was one of the most influential in the late seventies (at least two professors in my college had us do assignments on it!). But it’s now been forty years since that article was written, and the results of the Me-based  Third Great Awakening can now be analyzed.

Most social analysts agree that the internet is the most democratic vehicle for expression in human history. For better or worse, anyone can proclaim him/herself an expert on anything – whether or not they have a graduate degree or years of experience in a field. Of course, if you want people to take you seriously, it helps to have the credentials.

But short of declaring myself a medical doctor or lawyer (or other government-licensed professional), I can pretty much brand myself any way I want. And thanks to blogs, Google (thanks to which we have SEO and can theoretically be seen by hundreds of millions) – and especially thanks to Twitter, I can believe and say anything I want about myself, and broadcast my “Me-ness” to tens of thousands, or even millions. There are so many “marketing experts” out there who claim to have “the secret” to making millions on-line, and maybe they do. But a world (and a platform, like Twitter), where everyone is an expert can only be possible in a world after the Me Decade.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it! I remember a discussion on a Quark xPress newsgroup from about ten years ago, where one of the posters once mourning the “lower quality” of publishing as a result of DTP. In the old days, the guy said, you had to be an “expert” – using the hot type, setting up the plates, etc. Now, any kid could make their own newspaper or magazine, and it was ruining business! As one of those “DTP kids,” I felt bad for this gentleman, who was obviously losing out in what had become an outmoded, dinosaur business. But why shouldn’t I have an opportunity to have my say if the technology allows it?

If there’s anything Twitter proves, it’s that there’s room at the top for everyone. Just like anyone could be an expert on DTP or marketing, and everyone can have their own blog, Twitter lets everyone take advantage of technology to market or brand themselves any way they want. The ability to be who YOU want – and to get others to take it seriously – is the ultimate end-product of the Me Decade, and Twitter is the tool that makes it happen!