I'll bet Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin had in mind a grand unification of mankind, making it possible for everybody to talk to everybody in real time. And that promise is still out there, unfulfilled.
But instead the result of the internet generation is Donald Trump. A reality show clown, a know-nothing buffoon who tweets out nonsensical conspiracy theories at 3:00am. We have no "news cycle" anymore, we have nonstop barrages of made-up stories mixed in with real stories about people trying to get famous by killing other people in the most dramatic ways possible.
This is exactly (if not precisely) the danger the founding fathers envisioned, when they separated the fledgling nation from pure democracy into representative government. The bulk of people, the masses (washed or un-), the rabble are not qualified to run things. Left to their own e-devices, they'll ruin things.
Does the internet need a governor?
Will the public, in time, develop bullshit filters that they didn't need when the public discourse was moderated?
Will a news source emerge eventually, from the swirling chaos, that is both reliable and truthful, not beholden to powerful image shapers and not afraid to speak truth to power?
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