Kansas City Star TV critic (yes, a few daily papers still have one of those) Aaron Barnhart describes the past 10 years as having been a time when “technology put culture in the hands of many people.” In other words, gadgets and the Intrawebs and infinite cable channels allowed people…

…to produce, consume and comment on culture, exercising powers that had previously been off-limits to the untrained. They broke the back of the music business with the aid of iPods and social networks. They humbled the newspaper industry with the help of Google. They raised the existential question of what exactly are radio and television.

Barnhart ought to know about what online communications can do. After all, he originally broke into professional media-punditry by posting a weekly David Letterman fan newsletter to Usenet discussion boards.