Oh it does far, far more than simply what radio did to the world. Radio did not take the primary engine of all economic activity and commoditize it. The Inter

Oh it does far, far more than simply what radio did to the world. Radio did not take the primary engine of all economic activity and commoditize it. The Internet doesn't just enable us to communicate better. It (and the computers all around... in time, they will be seen as having arrived 'at the same time') makes it trivially easy to distribute things. And distribution as a valuable problem to solve is what led to the Industrial Revolution and basically every single aspect of our culture. Now, it's trivial. Now, what could have built you a titanic global corporation turning over trillions in revenue a month can be done by a clever 12 year old with some spare time on their hands. The consequences of this can not be underestimated, but inevitably will be. We built factories to feed distribution. That packed people into cities near them. Because the valuable work here was solving that problem of distribution, and because 'machines were doing the work', workers were paid very little. Which led to adolescents no longer being able to get employment which would enable them to support any children they might produce. Which led to society suddenly for the first time needing to control sex. Which led to houses being built with separate bedrooms instead of common rooms where the whole family slept (and screwed). This is just one isolated consequence of the value of solving the problem of distribution (both of the product of work and work to be done) as an example of how wide-reaching it was. The consequences took centuries to unfold. And now in the majority of cases, computers and the Internet go beyond making it a trivial problem to solve and straight into turning the extensive distribution networks and ancillary things built to serve them now actively destroy value. A musician could distribute an album directly to their listeners... or submit it into a supply chain that would involve thousands of other people, dozens of companies, delay the release of the album, and make it a worse product (DRM, restrictive formats, etc). At first you might think this is a small issue, that it only affects a handful of industries where the product can be delivered digitally. But it is stupendously larger than that. It requires a complete rethinking of every aspect of economy itself. The drawbacks of mass-produced goods which were once compensated for by the profound value of solving distribution, both to consumers and to workers, are now uncompensated and will only become more glaring as time passes. Socially, the Internet has more of the opposite role of radio. Rather than re-tribalizing man, it will amplify the individual and while it will facilitate collective action it will also facilitate freedom from any 'lock in' to the collective. Are you a member of Tribe X if you have participated in 4 out of 800 things done by Tribe X? If you 'join' and 'leave' within the hour? Is representative government still a legitimate compromise if it was initially created to serve a purpose which can now be achieved in a far superior manner by technology? Radio gave a few groups the ability to unidirectionally communicate, and most the ability to bidirectionally communicate with one other person. The Internet doesn't just give everyone their own radio station. It gives them an arbitrary number of them. It can give every thought its own radio station. It will have consequences for the very notion of history, the concept of self, of society in ways we can only half-competently guess at if we throw out all of our assumptions (way harder than those not acquainted with a bunch of different philosophies presumes it is) and start examining 'necessary and sufficient' for quite literally everything. Previously, we have rarely even considered "does this thing absolutely and fundamentally require physical co-location?" This will become the dominant, if not the only, factor which determines whether something will be rewritten. And those things which presently do require physical co-location (far fewer than you imagine if you have not specifically thought about it) will be made to not require it if the laws of physics make it possible. No other law or tradition will prevent it.