Mark Whitaker: We're in a Second 'Great Escape' as Digital Media Reshapes the Public Sphere
anselm · x · 2026-10-17
Sharing Mark Whitaker's argument that in under 10 years, the global majority of media now flows through individually-selected, viral, self-assembling smartphone-network communities.
Whitaker frames this via his 'Great Escapes' concept: specific historical transition periods that create exit possibilities from an old system, the first being the 15th-century escape from feudalism. He argues we're now in a second great escape — global decentralized digital media makes a balanced, nested full public sphere durably available at all scales of community for the first time since early mass printing in Europe.
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