Matthew Continetti

September 29, 2020 11:20 PM

Over coffee this morning I read a fascinating interview with Martin Gurri, the former CIA analyst who first noticed the seismic impact of social media on world politics. The author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, Gurri studies the fracturing of discourse and the frantic attempts of elites to reassert control over public life. "We are in the first stages of a gigantic transformation from the industrial mode of information and communication to something that doesn't even have a name yet," Gurri said. "It's an extinction event for the narratives. The ideal of representative democracy is in trouble, for example, and the institutions around that ideal will have to be reformed if they wish to retain any sort of legitimacy."