| Summary/Abstract |
One of the most compelling critiques of the impact of new technologies on modern culture and politics makes this observation: “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”1 This critique seems apt for our contemporary world, given the ways the Internet has degraded public discourse, undermined the daily newspaper as a watchdog on the powerful, challenged the integrity of education, and dramatically shifted the trajectory of American presidential leadership.
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