For better or worse, the basis of popular culture now seems to be user-generated content like memes and videos. When I was a kid it was TV. That's a big change, from maximally centralized to maximally decentralized.
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20 years ago I would have predicted that this would be a change for the better. Now I'm not so sure. Less centralization also seems to mean more polarization.
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This a return to the historical norm where most information was acquired person-to-person rather than broadcast. And polarization here is analogous to annealing, where the communications system is mismatched from the underlying society. The atoms will settle into new forms.
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