Made me want to very much read a book I had not gotten to...

Made me want to very much read a book I had not gotten to. Now I have. It's excellent. I endorse Noah's review:

Noah Smith: Book Review: The Revolt of the Public, by Martin Gurri: "Social media, Gurri asserts, has both empowered and emboldened the public, freeing it from the control of centralized, hierarchical push-media.... The public's goal is negation-denunciation of respected leaders, derailment of political programs, overthrow of parties or governments, discrediting of institutions, etc.... The usefulness of this book is in drawing parallels between a bunch of things that might seem unrelated.... If Gurri is right, these things are fundamentally about a technology-social media-and the way it changes power relations between the public and elites, then we can expect today's explosions of anger to be followed by others tomorrow, and then others the day after tomorrow, and on and on and on.��Gurri may not convince you-in fact, if he does, you're probably not enough of a skeptic-but he will give you a new framework with which to usefully think about the political chaos of the modern world...

#noted