Disintermediation
The very promise of the digital revolution. A distributed network whose design cleaves to the end-to-end principle promises its users the ability, never before possessed, to reach one’s clients, friends, relations, countrymen, lovers, fighters, haters - in short, anyone - costlessly. Suddenly, a generation of frustrated novelists could publish their bildungsromane direct to the colossal cruel indifference of a world suddenly drowning in the sodding things, without the reality-dosing filter of a publisher to save them the bother of those wasted months. From nowhere Middle-aged men, resentful of their own profligacy with the productive years of their lives could compose, record, mix, master and distribute their dreary pop songs to the studied indifference of every man-jack on this barren crag of rock, including their own immediate families, not that they’re bitter or anything, and have them at least sound like real pop music. Suddenly maverick reality TV hosts could hot-wire their self-absorbed political aspirations into the consciousness of a nation, unfiltered by the agency of advertising, or the mediation of a traditional political party.
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