Imagine a world where almost nobody could interact with other people without meeting them in person or having their phone number, and nobody could learn anything unless it was on TV or they had the right book, then suddenly all at once there's the internet, millions of people connected at once and able to exchange any information instantaneously. I lived through that transition, and I remember like it was yesterday that the world believed it was going to make EVERYTHING better and only better. I mean it was expected that all of society, everywhere, was going to be straight uphill in quality for everybody from then on. The optimism of the academic community and the media was tremendous. We were told we were stepping straight into a new utopian era of global enlightenment. People couldn't imagine a way in which culture, politics, the economy, education, even race relations could do anything but improve exponentially once the average person could look up any knowledge they wanted and chit chat with strangers from every continent at once. lol