What I tend to think is that the eruption of what seems to me overwhelmingly crap mass culture, at all levels (the "high culture" as well as the "low culture") is a bit like a candle blazing up just before it goes out.

I believe that the age characterised by millions of people all doing the same things, and looking at the same films and listening to the same music, like so many sheep (except that sheep can tell good grass from bad) is going to be seen as a temporary phenomenon of the 20thy century, which won't last that far into the 21st century.

In place of that we're going to see fragmentation and diversification - and the technology that we are using here is just the beginning of that. I don't think we need to worry about the mass culture wiping out the specialised sub-cultures, but rather the other way round.

There's going to be a price to pay for that, because a fragmented culture is likely to mean an increasingly fragmented community. And I can't imagine what is going to hold the different sub-cultures together.