Oh, the Things You Can Think!

Staking Out Solid Ground in the Wash of Information

In 2014, Martin Gurri quietly self-published an e-book called The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium (2nd edition 2018). A former CIA analyst, he had specialized for years in global media, which meant that he monitored the internet and watched its effects around the world. At first, he said, people in power tended to dismiss bloggers as inconsequential nobodies. But that began to change after a series of eruptions, later collectively dubbed the "Arab Spring," led to the upheaval of long-held norms and authority structures in the Middle East and North Africa.

Gurri saw that these were all post-internet developments, and he predicted that more would come. Since then, we have...