It's quite eye opening the way that this article paints Facebook as a clueless giant, unknowingly enabling revolutions, swinging elections and upending societies.
I don't think there's any precedent for this.
I don't think there's any precedent for this.
The role of media -- the press, cheap paper, high-speed printing, widespread literacy, pamphlets, telegraph, radio, cinema, audio tape, public address systems, mass media, advertising, television, cable, talk radio, BBS systems, Usenet, the Internet, the WWW (versions 1.0, 2.0, and mobile), etc., in political and social matters is absolutely profound. And often quite unexpected at least by the initial creators.
Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is one introduction to this, though there are many others. I'm going through Robert W. McChesney's work presently.
/me glances at the reading pile^Wstack^Wmountain^Wsingularity.
Um. Maybe ;-)
Actually, a friend has previously strongly recommended Guy Dubord, and I keep running across references. I do have ... something by him. Dense.