I think the point of the article was to show how a form of new media changed a society. It's particularly useful for people trying to understand what the future

I think the point of the article was to show how a form of new media changed a society. It's particularly useful for people trying to understand what the future of the web will look like. They're showing how the nature of the medium (as an entertainment vehicle) shaped the nature of the the public's interaction with it. You could apply an abstraction like that to the internet as well. A pipeline for mass communication was built and changed their attitudes toward authoritative sources. Our pipelines are fracturing and we probably have certain attitudes that aren't useful for the future. Maybe I'm reading between the lines too much, but reading it figuratively is much more useful to me.