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The fundamental thesis of this article is correct, namely, that revolutionary information-dissemination technologies are inherently egalitarian in nature, pushing information to the masses that theretofore had been horded, and thereby empowering, the elite. Thus in all such cases the old elite is overthrown as their exclusive hold on knowledge and information is fractured.

The author refers to this process as an information “reformation” because Martin Luther’s revolutionary destruction of the power elite of his day was a direct consequence of the invention of the movable-type printing press.

BTW, I believe the next transforming technology is “fiber to the doorstep”. I wrote the following about a year ago:

The Marriage of Television and The Internet

Marriage of the Internet to your TV set is finally underway. Ultimately, instead of plugging a satellite dish, a cable, or a roof antenna into your TV set, you’ll plug your Internet connection into your TV via a fancy TIVO-like box that has an easy-to-use user interface.
However, ubiquitous installation of fiber-to-the-doorstep (FTTD) will be necessary before the marriage of the Internet and television can become a completely successful reality. While it’s pretty simple to build an Internet-TIVO type of box to interface your Internet connection with your favorite giant flat screen monitor, the unlimited bandwidth provided by FTTD is critical for realizing the full potential of the marriage. Lots of folks are currently working on “The Box”, and eventually a few elegant solutions will shake out, but until the speed of FTTD arrives, shows will be recorded off the Internet when folks are sleeping and later played back in real time, and the possibilities for unlimited channels will be virtually nil.

But, when those unlimited number of channels do arrive via FTTD, the real kicker will be the implosion of the monopolies of the existing broadcast and cablecast distribution networks because with FTTD anyone can become a national caster! Instead of just being TV consumers, anyone of us could become a TV producer and distributor. FTTD will thus do to the monopoly casters what Internet publishing is doing to the publishing monopolies of the newspapers and magazines. Instead of a few limited distribution channels requiring enormous amounts of capital for entry, all of a sudden the number of distribution channels will be virtually unlimited and the costs to enter will approach zero.

For example, I personally want to see a brilliantly produced conservative aggregator channel that takes advantage of the talents and knowledge of its many volunteer members, with each contributing video productions using inexpensive equipment like Flip video cameras, with a master programmer stringing together instant and factual real-time refutations of the latest lies told by the Obammunist-Marxist-Media, all streamed in real-time to the homes of everyone who might care to watch. For variety and interest, such a channel could also include programming contributed from member-experts on computers, pets, medicine, automobiles, technology, cooking, firearms, business, taxes, law, science and all the many subjects its members would be interested in.

In effect, FTTD married to an elegant interface box that connects the Internet to a household’s main monitor will unleash unimaginable creative forces from a chorus of new voices. Throughout history, from monks copying texts in monasteries, to the invention of movable type, to high speed printing presses, to the Internet, and finally to FTTD, more and more information has been disseminated to and from more and more people, inevitably leading to the downfall of the elites who previously hoarded information in order to maintain their power and control over the deliberately ignorant proletariat of their day.

Interestingly enough, the information-elite have heretofore generally been unable to foresee their own destruction from the advancement of information distribution technology, usually reacting only after the cat was out of the bag, taking anemic steps such as trying to control who owns a printing press or trying to promote so-called net neutrality control over the Internet.

However, it may be different with FTTD. While the U.S. Democrat Socialist Marxist Progressive Party will try to make sure that all citizens have equal-but-mediocre Internet access (just as they promote all equal-but-mediocre works), if they manage to smarten up, they will do everything in their power to thwart FTTD as the next and virtually final step in egalitarian information distribution technology in order to preserve the existing mainstream media information distribution monopolies that they currently control.

While one naturally does not expect socialists like Obama to promote FTTD, one could hope that conservatives would. After all, conservative voices would greatly benefit from the implosion of the “progressive” (socialist) main stream media that would result from an egalitarian technology like FTTD. But that was not to be either. One of my biggest disappointments was the dogged maintenance of the status quo by George Bush II.

I had so hoped that when Bush II came into office he would do something big and positive like an FTTD initiative that provided low-cost government loans to ANYONE who wanted to build fiber-to-the-doorstep networks, with the only proviso being that carriage terms would be the same for all content providers. Thus, the last barrier to total egalitarian information distribution would thereby have been breached, and in retrospect, perhaps the destruction of the U.S. economy by the government-fostered housing bubble could have been averted or lessened by freeing many new voices to warn of the dangers of those government policies.

When the conservatives next take control of the government, let’s hope they recognize the advantage it will be to them to implode the elitist main stream media and replace it with a more egalitarian model, as well as recognizing the means by which to do that, namely assuring that FTTD becomes a reality.