Hegemony and Not

The young are still the enemies of uniformity, and the Internet, as it extends its reach into all the nooks and crannies of our days, is looking more and more like an enormous conduit of conventionality. What are Facebook and Google but giant institutions, arms of the new establishment? What are smartphones if not high-tech leashes? Some kind of rebellion seems in order. -- Nick Carr, Get on my lawn, kids, June 02, 2011

This is true and untrue, I guess. To banally quote Eddie Money, "it's in the way that you use it"--it's a tool. a series of interconnecting tools--and some people conform, some people trek out.

One of the comments on the Carr piece referred to this, which paints a slightly different picture.