This article has some good points, but it also suffers a lot from the author's extremely narrow horizons:
- It's very US-centric. Public universities are AFAIK free or very cheap in Germany for example. The reason for rising costs in the US is in large part about cuts to government support for higher education.
- It's very upper-middle-class in perspective, with no understanding of anyone who isn't doing well. America is one of "the most prosperous countries" in the world if you're in top 10%—but if you're in bottom 30%, say, there are many countries where you'll be much better off. Anywhere with socialized medicine, for example: if you're poor, what is a routine trip to the doctor elsewhere can cause bankruptcy in the US.
- The author apparently knows very little history.
Consider this quote: "During the 20th century, “the people” were an ambiguous, lifeless mass. They couldn’t organize themselves, so organization came down from the commands of people who controlled the media. Nothing else was possible; deference to authority was the structural destiny of the Mass Media age."
This is absolute nonsense. The 20th century is bursting with political movements that came from below: good, bad, and ugly, whatever you might say about any particular one, there's a hell of a lot of them in total.
In the 20th century, in the US alone, you could point to the suffragettes, organized labor at different times, the KKK (4 million members at peak in 1920s!), the multitude of different workers' groups of all political stripes (from veterans' march to IWW organizers to wacky retirement-lottery scheme whose details I forget) who pushed FDR to eventually offer the New Deal to counter-act the rising tide of protest, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam-war protests, Stonewall and the gay rights movement... on and on and on.
thats a strange critique considering the article. i mean the whole thing just focuses on the american society... why is that a problem?
> [quote] This is absolute nonsense
While this quote is indeed nonesens with no context, thats not exactly what the author meant there
Back then, quick organization and initiatives weren't really possible.
Take each of your example and check just how long it took for them to become widespread. It was years - not hours as it is today.
And in order to actually organize something political, a leader of such a popular organization would've to intervene, making his point spot on.
The general argument is "X has this impact on Y" (in this case, Internet and US). Given that X is global, that the Internet impacts many countries, a reasonable perspective would involve at least looking at how X impacted A, B, and C, which might prove that the impact is merely correlation in the time, not causation. Or it might strengthen the argument.
But in its current form it's a universal claim backed by very limited evidence (and ignoring evidence that suggests other causes than the Internet).
Even when universities are free, they are still not without problems. In Denmark education is free and you even get paid a "wage" when attending university so you don't even have to borrow (as much) money for housing/food.
High schools and universities in Denmark get money per student that passes the exams. If you fail the student, no money for you.
So there is a clear incentive for the schools to admit as many students as possible and lower the level required for passing the exams. Schools have had their "per student" budget cut year after year.
So the level of education today is not the same as 40 years ago. For high school the signalling part has become even more important, so much we lack blue collar workers because people think that kind of education is beneath them. The following question has absolutely the same validity in Denmark as in USA:
> Would you rather have a Princeton diploma without a Princeton education, or a Princeton education without a Princeton diploma?
Some things are not worth it, even when they are free.
> In the 20th century, in the US alone, you could point to the suffragettes, organized labor at different times, the KKK (4 million members at peak in 1920s!), the multitude of different workers' groups of all political stripes (from veterans' march to IWW organizers to wacky retirement-lottery scheme whose details I forget) who pushed FDR to eventually offer the New Deal to counter-act the rising tide of protest, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam-war protests, Stonewall and the gay rights movement... on and on and on.
Most of these were borne from trusted institutions:
* Organized labor WAS an institution of its own.
* The resurgence of the KKK in the 20th century was inspired by the Hollywood film Birth of a Nation.
* The Civil Rights Movement was largely organized by institutions like the NAACP and partially borne out of organized religion.
* Popular opposition to the Vietnam War, as explicitly addressed in the article, came largely from the influence of mass media, Walter Cronkite in particular.
* Most of the political movements of the late 1960's and early 1970's were comprised primarily of university students--in other words, they were also incubated (unwittingly, to be fair!) by established institutions.
Many of the rest is stuff that probably seems bigger in retrospect. For example, the Stonewall riots took place in 1969, the same year as the moon landing and Woodstock and one year after the Tet Offensive and the assassinations of both RFK and MLK. It probably didn't make a big impact on the culture at the time. According to a Google ngrams search (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=stonewall%2C%2...), the phrase "Stonewall" didn't have a large uptick in terms of being written about in books until the 1980's, over a decade after the riot itself. (Most of the usages prior to then, and probably many of them even after, are likely references to General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.)
Did some searching, turns out I was actually thinking of the the Townsend Plan, which was not actually wacky (I misremembered the details) and helped pave the way for Social Security. The wikipedia article leaves out a lot of details, if memory serves it had widespread support.
- It's very US-centric. Public universities are AFAIK free or very cheap in Germany for example. The reason for rising costs in the US is in large part about cuts to government support for higher education.
- It's very upper-middle-class in perspective, with no understanding of anyone who isn't doing well. America is one of "the most prosperous countries" in the world if you're in top 10%—but if you're in bottom 30%, say, there are many countries where you'll be much better off. Anywhere with socialized medicine, for example: if you're poor, what is a routine trip to the doctor elsewhere can cause bankruptcy in the US.
- The author apparently knows very little history.
Consider this quote: "During the 20th century, “the people” were an ambiguous, lifeless mass. They couldn’t organize themselves, so organization came down from the commands of people who controlled the media. Nothing else was possible; deference to authority was the structural destiny of the Mass Media age."
This is absolute nonsense. The 20th century is bursting with political movements that came from below: good, bad, and ugly, whatever you might say about any particular one, there's a hell of a lot of them in total.
In the 20th century, in the US alone, you could point to the suffragettes, organized labor at different times, the KKK (4 million members at peak in 1920s!), the multitude of different workers' groups of all political stripes (from veterans' march to IWW organizers to wacky retirement-lottery scheme whose details I forget) who pushed FDR to eventually offer the New Deal to counter-act the rising tide of protest, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam-war protests, Stonewall and the gay rights movement... on and on and on.