Andrew, this is a great post. I have little to add, but I was struck by this late question:
> But could one make a case for the common public culture that the communist regime produced, everybody reading the same things, watching the same shows [...] a common public conversation might have its own benefits.
The same theme comes up in American politics. Markus Prior's Post-Broadcast Democracy (2007) points to the Balkanization of the U.S. television landscape that arose as the three big TV networks ceded ground to cable TV channels. Nicholas Negroponte voiced a similar concern about what the Internet would do to our common culture when he wrote about the Daily Me. And there may be a strong connection here to some of Michael Chwe's work, though I don't know it well enough to say more.
Impressionistically, I'm guessing that many of us who lived through the "before" and "after" periods in the U.S. would find it hard to say that nothing meaningful was lost when the number of television channels grew exponentially, or when the Internet led to an enormous proliferation of news outlets.
Andrew, this is a great post. I have little to add, but I was struck by this late question:
> But could one make a case for the common public culture that the communist regime produced, everybody reading the same things, watching the same shows [...] a common public conversation might have its own benefits.
The same theme comes up in American politics. Markus Prior's Post-Broadcast Democracy (2007) points to the Balkanization of the U.S. television landscape that arose as the three big TV networks ceded ground to cable TV channels. Nicholas Negroponte voiced a similar concern about what the Internet would do to our common culture when he wrote about the Daily Me. And there may be a strong connection here to some of Michael Chwe's work, though I don't know it well enough to say more.
Impressionistically, I'm guessing that many of us who lived through the "before" and "after" periods in the U.S. would find it hard to say that nothing meaningful was lost when the number of television channels grew exponentially, or when the Internet led to an enormous proliferation of news outlets.