For a public to exist it had to achieve self-consciousness—some irritation or dissatisfaction was needed to pry it apart from the elites. For the public to voice its thoughts and opinions, and thus transform itself, potentially, into a political actor, required a means of communication. This became a possibility only after the spread of the printing press. My thesis holds that a revolution in the nature and content of communication—the Fifth Wave of information—has ended the top-down control elites exerted on the public during the industrial age.
