It is hard these days to escape a pervasive sense of dread and doom, particularly online. The heady early days of Wired magazine in the 1990s, the era of internet triumphalism and blogging seem now like a fever dream or the cringe-inducing naivete of youth. When I was in my early twenties, I and so many of my cohort truly believed in the power of the internet to fundamentally alter the power dynamics of American political life. We were angry, sometimes despairing, but we also felt that, at least at a technological level, the future belonged to us.
