With the Industrial Revolution came the Great Concentration -- an agglomeration of territories, a centralization of capital and production that propelled the world into a new and prosperous era but also gave rise to the lunatic Marx and all who came after him. Now, with the Communications Revolution, we have the Great Re-Weaving:
It was not unlike the moment in Scooby Doo cartoons when the villain howls “I could have got away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids.” And why shouldn’t he feel that way? His idol FDR turned a recession into a depression but thanks to the lack of the meddling kids of blogs, Youtube, internet, no one knew. The eunuch press covered for him and held laurels above his inflated image for decades.
That the common man even knew the country was in danger now, and that the world was in the hands of an intellectual poseur who held no affection for America or the American people, was the fault of this rank, disorganized, non-hierarchical ability to report the news. Those meddling kids!
Which meant everyone knew there was danger, but the danger the elites saw was, most of all, from those they wished to make their subjects.
[. . .]
And it was unpleasant for everyone. And terrifying for the elites. Fortunately the elites weren’t the world. Out there, on the ground, the people they despised, had learned to strive and thrive for themselves.
In the world that emerged after the inevitable turmoil: a world more oriented to the individual; a world when the old lie of collectivism simply wasn’t feasible; they looked back and wondered how the elites could have been so blind and how they could have thought the sky was falling, when it was only their Marxist papier-mache sky and their gaslight false sun.
By Sarah Hoyt, who just became my favorite science fiction writer. Whole thing is a good read, highly recommended. I'm a little less optimistic than Sarah and others like her about the power of the new media to unleash the individual and level the playing field. But I think the technology is changing the world, in ways we can't exactly see yet but mostly for the better.
