The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

by Martin Gurri

Today we know both partners in this political minuet were correct. Digital media can be exploited by self-assembled networks to muster their forces and propagandize for their causes, against the resistance of those who command the levers of power. But this understates the distance between the old and the new. A churning, highly redundant information sphere has taken shape near at hand to ordinary persons yet beyond the reach of modern government. In the tectonic depths of social and political life, the balance of power has fundamentally shifted between authority and obedience, ruler and ruled, elite and public, so that each can inflict damage on the other but neither can attain a decisive advantage. That is the non-utopian thesis of this book. And it was arrived at, in part, by pursuing threads of analysis about the nature and consequences of new media first spun by Clay Shirky.