Used Wisely, the Internet Can Actually Help Public Discourse | Wired

Net positive; on a related note, see Kara Swisher's latest column, How You Can Help Fight the Information Wars | NYT

"This change from Postman’s age was made possible by our much-maligned internet: By disaggregating media and audiences into razor-thin slivers, scalably addressable thanks to reduced distribution and production costs, we freed the national conversation from a mushy median. Granted, that created the Alex Jones of our world. But it also spawned a rich variety of blogs, digital journalism, and that new Athenian agora, podcasts. Nowadays, anyone, not just intellectual elites in an Ivy League seminar room, can observe a sharp mind in the process of thinking, rather than merely performing for a jittery TV audience.

What lessons do we of the Smartphone Age take away from the TV musings of Boorstin and Postman? For starters, avoid the false media currency of pseudoevents and their exhausting commerce, and instead do as the ancient Romans did with coins—hoard the authentic articles that only grow rarer with time."

Used Wisely, the Internet Can Actually Help Public Discourse | Wired