The Longing (1999)

> We are so desperate to have our voices back that we are willing to leap into the void. We embrace the Web not knowing what it is, but hoping that it will burn the org chart -- if not the organization -- down to the ground. Released from the gray-flannel handcuffs, we say anything, curse like sailors, rhyme like bad poets, flame against our own values, just for the pure delight of having a voice.

What we got was Myspace and its friends. The technology delivered. But once everybody could broadcast, nobody could be heard.

So we got Facebook, which started out as "me, Me, ME" and ended as a broadcast medium with targeted ads.

The best we can do so far is to have lots of small communities, as with Reddit. Or just passively doomscroll the infoblasts.

"And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."