information age

I spent the first part of my career as a social historian of technology whose original research was on the Constitutional-era and the role of mass printing, mass education, circulating libraries, and the new popular form of the novel in the creation of American democracy and American publics and especially unhappy counter-publics, many of which were despised and feared by the Founding Fathers. The novel was the blog and the video game and the social network—all of those in different ways—of the post-Revolutionary era in America. As with the Internet today, youth—especially late adolescents—were the single greatest demography of consumers then and were also the typical heroes and heroines of popular novels. This isn’t surprising; the contemporary entertainment, fashion, and many other consumer industries are specifically targeted at the 18-25 demographic. Youth, then and now, lead the way!