The common carriage standard imposed clear, consistent guidelines on telecommunications companies. They had to transmit messages without prejudice and without violating the confidentiality of their contents.

a world defined not by production but by communication, not by objects but by images, representations of things take precedence over the things themselves. Everything is mediated. We become, whether we realize it or not, simulated beings experiencing simulated events in a simulated environment.

In forming opinions and casting votes, people are motivated much less by political ideology than by group identity.45 Opinions emerge from affiliation, not vice versa. People may like to believe that their political views reflect a careful, reasoned analysis of the issues, but usually they’re by-products of tribal allegiance. They’re rooted in

Every communication medium is political, a conduit of power as much as thought. In extending the range of speech, writing widened the scope of personal and institutional influence. A written word had the potential to shape the thinking and behavior of far more people, around the globe and down the ages, than a spoken one ever could. The expansion

A communication medium, for Cooley, is not just a conduit for information. It is an instrument for regulating group behavior and belief.

The history of technological progress shows that once people adapt to greater efficiency in any practice or process, reductions in efficiency, whatever the rationale, feel intolerable. The public is rarely willing to suffer delays and nuisances once it has been relieved of them. In a culture programmed for ease, speed, and diversion, friction is

Every new medium creates a new environment. As we adapt to the environment, it shapes our perceptions and thoughts, our relationships with others, even our sense of self.

Even if semantic considerations are irrelevant to their calculations, the algorithms used to sort and channel information regulate what content is transmitted, the form it takes, and how it’s interpreted. They influence meaning both directly (by selecting the information people see) and indirectly (by promoting certain forms of expression and

In 1919, Lippmann wrote a despairing essay in the Atlantic Monthly titled “The Basic Problem of Democracy.” Democracy’s founding ideal—that of a well-informed citizenry capable of making reasoned judgments about national problems and plans—had come into being in a much simpler time, he argued, when most concerns were local and people had direct