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

“When man is overwhelmed by information,” Marshall McLuhan saw, “he resorts to myth. Myth is inclusive, time-saving, and fast.”

“We imagine most things before we experience them,” and our preconceptions “govern deeply the whole process of perception.”

The environment in which we live—the “real environment”—is “altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance,” Lippmann argued. “To act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model.” Drawing on whatever information is available to us and filtering it through our own desires and biases, each of us

Iris Murdoch, in her 1957 essay “Metaphysics and Ethics,” put it expansively: “Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture.”

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.

It has blurred the distinctions between categories of information—distinctions of form, register, sense, and importance—that the epistemic architecture of the analog era preserved and even accentuated. Content has collapsed, as our adoption of the drab, generic term content to refer to all forms of expression testifies. Everything now has to fit

central, corporate-controlled clearinghouses of news, messages, and other content.

Under the act, telecommunications companies were required to operate as “common carriers,” a legal term borrowed from the transportation business. Early in the industrial age, countries recognized that shipping firms were economic linchpins—many other businesses depended on their services—and as a result wielded enormous power over commerce and