Glib, Tawdry, Savvy, and Standardized

Prognostications about media and society generally oscillate between two poles: to the north, one hears dithyrambs to a projected utopia offering fingertip access to all the information and images a citizen might need to enrich democracy and multiply freedom beyond recognition; from the south, one hears low moans about a dystopia of absolute surveillance and stupefaction. I resolve to violate certain hitherto sacrosanct rules of prognostication: I pledge not to invoke the bogeyman Big Brother...