With the internet, people have gained control over their information access. This has immediately reversed the old order, where elites controlled the news agenda through mainstream media.

Reversal, by contrast, represents critical conditions—it occurs when a medium reaches its extremes or limits. Reversal is often negative: a common pattern is when a medium flips from service to disservice

In orality, a person is immersed in the “here-and-now” situation. In literacy, a person is detached from the environment and focused on inner vision—contemplation.

Media evolution is driven by the technological imperative: the emergent force that makes any technology “seek” better performance. Once humans learned to operate with nature instrumentally, they selected what works and what doesn’t, providing “natural selection” for media.

Now, after the Axial Decade, once-emancipated authors have become serfs bound to platforms, much like medieval peasants were bound to landlords’ domains.

Texting retrieves speech-behavior, but in digital form. Emojis mimic gestures and facial expressions. Abbreviations like LOL or OMG work as digital exclamations. CAPS LOCK YELLS. Memes and GIFs complement digital speech-behavior, as proverbs and sayings did in oral culture.

Social media has reversed mass communication from reflections to reflexes, from substance to attitude. This favors retribalization,

Why does reversal stand out among other media effects (Laws of Media) in the digital era? As McLuhan wrote, “At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential.”[7] Reaching limits is a prerequisite for reversal. Electric speed invited reversals. Now, society lives at digital speed. Not just communication, but nearly all human

In the forms of the Cloud and the Pyramid, direct democracy clashed with representative democracy and other forms of governing. It was not the lack of democracy that threatened society but the overproduction of direct democracy via the internet that threatened old institutions.