Hamish McKenzie

For decades, we all lived in a media world that was kind of like a temple.

It was top-down, centralized and controlled by gatekeepers.

We had the city newspaper over breakfast, radio for the morning commutes, TV news just before dinner.

And it was a relatively stable system, but it was also rigid.

It could represent only a few perspectives, and new voices had to be let in by favor.

Well, the internet companies came along, and they sacked this temple.

Craigslist took the classifieds, Google and Facebook captured the ad market, streaming services are dismantling television.

And now, with the rise of social networks, we're in the age of chaos media, where anyone can have a voice, but the power still flows primarily to the platforms.

We've gone from catechism to cacophony.

And our political culture mirrors this chaos.

Opponents are to be humiliated.

Followers are expected to show fealty to specific doctrines.

And attention of any kind, whether it's positive or negative, wins the day.

So we've gone from, ask not what your country can do for you to what you can do for your country, to dunk tweets and goading salutes.

Not going to do one of those.

But when you look closely, it is possible to see something new emerging.

And when I look closely, I see the green shoots of a garden.

This garden, to put it in somewhat inorganic terms, is a distributed system of independent voices who enjoy economic autonomy.

Unlike Instagram or TikTok, where the power mostly goes to Mark Zuckerberg or the Chinese Communist Party, the garden model connects creators directly with their communities.

We've seen in history how revolutions like this can take quite a long time to fully unfold.