There’s this idea that every major shift in media technology produces political instability, and that’s absolutely true. But the people who say this (ex., KK) don’t talk about why and how the form of the medium influences the nature of the political formations.

The most obvious ramification is actually related to how centralized meaning-making ends up being — something that has to do deeply with exactly how much support you need to speak, and how far your voice goes as a result.

Prior to widespread literacy, you basically couldn’t reliably spread ideas beyond a small geographical area. Reality was extremely fragmented. A big…