Between Two Ages

may you live in interesting times

One thing I like to do is make things Real Simple. That’s what Sen. Iselin wanted, back in the day. He wanted things Real Simple when he was ranting in the Senate about Commies in the State Department. But I like to make things Real Simple because it’s fun.

And now that I understand Martin Gurri’s notion of the Fifth Wave, and the world has changed, I want to make his idea Real Simple.

In his book (still on order) he says:

I was born in the waning years of the next wave, that of mass media—the industrial, I-talk-you-listen mode of information…

It’s early days. The transformation has barely begun, and resistance by the old order will make the consequences nonlinear, uncertain. But I think I have already established that we stand, everywhere, at the first moment of what promises to be a cataclysmic expansion of information and communication technology. Welcome, friend, to the Fifth Wave.

No, no. Too much bibble-babble. Let’s make it Real Simple.

Age of Gutenberg. Communications dominated by a rising class of writers, reformers, and revolutionaries.

Age of Mass Media. Communications dominated by dumb-bunnies reciting Elite Narrative.

Age of Talk-Back. Bloggers and podcasters and SubStackers and X / Twitter get to talk back against the Elite Narrative.

Here’s the center of the storm. Remember Bari Weiss, late of The New York Times? She quit because bullying by the lefties in the newsroom. And then she started a SubStack, The Free Press that is full of all kinds of stuff, left, right, and center. And guess who writes for The Free Press. Why, none other than Martin Gurri, he of the Fifth Wave and The Revolt of the Public. Bless my buttons. And what is he writing about on The Free Press? Why nothing other than the Fifth Wave and Normies vs. Elites.

Here’s an example of the world in the dawning Age of Talk-Back: Jack Posobiec retweets Trump reporting on Kamala Harris’s doctor’s report.

Allergic rhinitis? Waaat? Then Poso notes:

So, here we have Trump and Poso blowing up the I-talk-you-listen rules of the Age of Mass Media and pushing the Kamala-is-a-drunk meme.

The point is that in the Age of Mass Media that could never have happened. First, the whole conspiracy theory of Kamala Harris’s alcohol problem would never have surfaced. Second, if the question ever surfaced it would have been buried by a “Republicans pounce” news item.

Don’t forget that Hillary Clinton’s “we lose total control” remark tells us that the educated Elite is fit to be tied. They know that the explosion of opinion and Talk Back is fatal to their regime and its rule. But they really don’t have any idea what to do. Other than put the Intelligence Community to work censoring opposition voices like they did during COVID and during the 2020 election, like it was 1965 and Walter Cronkite intoning “that’s the way it is” every night.

I mean: doesn’t that Cronkite quote absolutely encapsulate the Age of Mass Media? That’s the way it is, and no talk-back. Remember, the key moment in the Vietnam War was when Cronkite went to Vietnam and changed his mind, although, experts agree, he completely misunderstood what he saw there, because he was just a dumb-bunny reciting Elite Narrative and otherwise knew nothing.

Look. The fact is that nobody has a clue how this is going to end up. Or even where it is going in the short term. Clearly, the dominant mode of communication deeply influences the kind of ruling class that a society has.

But at least the advent of the Age of Talk-Back has changed the rules of the game, so there is Hope. But not necessarily Change, dear Barack.