The history of the internet is like a plane sweeping a metropolis starting in the sky. Each epoch intersects a number of buildings, and the level-set it creates

The history of the internet is like a plane sweeping a metropolis starting in the sky. Each epoch intersects a number of buildings, and the level-set it creates can be seen as a representation of the demographic that used it in that instance. At first the plane only touched the very highest buildings. These people are all mostly comfortable and well off. What has fundamentally changed in the past few years, however, is a phase shift as the plane has reached further and further down towards the ground. Look around at street level in a city and what do you see? Buildings dedicated to social security, hospitals, less-well-off individuals, people on disability, and more diversity than the ecologically narrow space above. It reminds me of a quote by Obama: "Government will never run the way Silicon Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy. This is a big, diverse country with a lot of interests and a lot of disparate points of view. And part of government’s job, by the way, is dealing with problems that nobody else wants to deal with."