The Atomization Of Content And Subsequent “Mass Customization”

.. is continuing, it seems.

David Weinberger reporting from The Annenberg Centre’s conference on hyperlinking and society:

Jay Rosen says that returns to Raymond Williams who says in Culture and Society:

There are no masses. There are only ways of seeing people as masses. People are unique, but you can address them as a mass.

The Age of Mass Media, says Jay, is about the art and science of seeing people as masses. But today all these ways of seeing people as masses are coming apart. They’re not as effective. People don’t stand for it any more. So now we have to learn how to see people not as a mass but as a public, a community, knowledge producers.

Links connect us horizontally, not just up and down. "All the professions that specialize in seeing people as masses, or as the market, are having to contend with a world where horizontal communication is so much more effective." Often, if people can meet each other, they don’t need the mass world, says Jay.

And, as a blogger, he says, through the "magic of links" he was able to talk about the press without having to go through the filter of the press. "So, for me linking has been powerfully associated with intellectual freedom.

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Tags: horizontality, hyperlinks, hyperlinking, wirearchy

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