THE END OF CULTURE AS WE KNOW IT?
In an article written for people who are just now waking up from a 10 year nap Reed Johnson writes in the LA Times that mass culture is dead.

Born sometime between the invention of baseball and the 1904 World's Fair, it began experiencing violent headaches and seizures shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, then lapsed into a coma during the launch of MySpace.com.

...it's been common knowledge, or at least conventional wisdom, that traditional mainstream mass culture has been clinging to life for decades, like one of Anne Rice's mottled vampires. But 2005 is when a chronic condition may have turned terminal.

But where is this search-driven culture headed?

But after bidding adieu to old-fangled mass culture, the question arises: This roiling, recombinant technoculture dangles the promise of change, creativity and shared public life -- but in the end, will it just come down to always-on, one-click shopping?

IOW, what difference does it make if a consumer-driven broadcast is replaced a gazillion consumer-driven narrowcasts? Is the boutique really all that different than the big box? Is there an actual change in substance or is it merely a change in information delivery?