the Republic of Letters, in the end, was an elite club, an intellectual Olympus far removed from the sight of Ortega’s particularized humanity. Whereas the networked public today is composed of ordinary persons. It spends more time on images of cute cats and pornography than on revolution or political philosophy. The new public, in fact, closely corresponds to the old masses, now escaped from Taylorist control and returning, in vital communities, to its particular interests and tastes.
