What the Hell Is Going On?

Big institutions used to have unquestioned control over the narrative. Their dominance once seemed eternal. But now, they’re losing their monopoly over the dissemination of ideas.

Like mass media and mass commerce, the average university is on the brink of collapse. Its structure is a rotting legacy of the Industrial Age. For years, anybody who wanted to learn on their own lacked the means to do so. Now, anybody with an internet connection has access to information. Harvard and Stanford will be okay, but dark days are ahead ... See more

Growing up in San Francisco, I had four choices: The San Francisco Chronicle, The Oakland Tribune, The San Jose Mercury News, and The New York Times. Reading the newspaper was my favorite ritual. But now, my daily sports entertainment comes from internet bloggers who tweet in their underwear. Unless I’m on an airplane with no Wi-Fi and out of batte... See more

For years, factual disputes were settled by the Britannica in the living room. Now, they’re settled by instant Google searches, most of which lead to Wikipedia. Open the Britannica in your grandparents’ living room and you’ll find outdated facts and figures. Wikipedia, though, is always evolving. The shift from Britannica to Wikipedia is indicative... See more

According to Gurri, modern information technology enables the public, composed of amateurs, to break the power hierarchies of the industrial age. As the floodgates of information open, the public, organized on social media networks, is clashing with hierarchical, Industrial-era governments and institutions.

The tide has shifted and people don’t trust authority like they used to. The same institutions that once commanded so much American praise have lost their edge and versatility. They look less like a Swiss army knife and more like your grandma’s dull, rusty, 19th-century butter knife. They’re slow and stodgy, bloated and inefficient.

The striking parallels between commerce, education, and politics isn’t a coincidence. In fact, it’s inevitable. In the past decade, the information environment has inverted from information scarcity to information abundance, and the effects are evident in every corner of society.

Narrative control is no longer monopolized. The arbiters of truth have fragmented. Millions of people, historically constrained by the reach and spread of their ideas, can theoretically reach anybody in the world with an internet connection. The truth has always existed, but until recently, we haven’t had the means to uncover and distribute it.

The psychology of the internet looks nothing like the Super Bowl. The internet is hyper-fragmented. It’s an isolated, personalized, asynchronous, choose-your-own-adventure experience. Brands, which used to be mass-produced, are now micro-targeted. The internet has unlimited shelf space, so monopolizing brick and mortar shelves is no longer a defens... See more