ABSTRACT
Five hundred years after the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, triggered at least in part by technological revolution (the invention of the printing press) and the subsequent democratisation of knowledge, we describe and discuss the consequences of digitisation and social media, the commercial, cultural, and social effects of the attention economy. The internet, once seen as a force for global social progress – as in the 1999 Cluetrain Manifesto, which hailed a “powerful global conversation”, is now seen as the enabler of a global information disorder that erodes the social fabric and undermines democratic processes. The reality is ambivalent, and our modern communication ecosystem is best described as the yin and yang of positive and negative, intended and unintended consequences.
