The radical shift............................

Our age is characterized by a radical shift along this spectrum:  from a public that was almost entirely reactive, to one that is hyper-active and ultra-intrusive.  This was made possible by a proliferation of choices.  The process resembled the radical strategic reversal described in my fable of Homo Informaticus.  As more structural options became available to ordinary people, the latter began a migration back to their original interests, and the institutions which had once hemmed their behavior lost the power to do so. 

. . . In business, design took priority over production, and personalization emerged as the grand ideal for design.  In information, technological innovation released an astronomical number of capabilities for use and abuse by ordinary persons, reconstituting the new public and enabling its assault on the temples of authority.

this last development can help explain why Lippmann and Dewey got the future wrong:  like every other person on the planet Earth, they failed to foresee the advent of personalized information technology.

-Martin Gurri,   The Revolt of the Public