And people around you had relevance. Your librarian was relevant as a gatekeeper of information. Now we are isolated and even if we do get the best information, we are somehow not satisfied. People are becoming dumber as information is becoming more available, a paradox.

Meanwhile, we are centralizing these institutions and therefore power brokers are being more disparate from the powerless, using the technologies that were supposed to give voices to the masses. Now the masses can enforce you to only speak in lock step with them.

Vonnegut wrote about how various technologies have removed the community value of moderate talents by enabling the best of the best to reach everyone with ease, all the time, any time. Being an OK musician, for instance, has gone from having pretty good social value and maybe even non-negligible economic value, to very little.

That effect has broadened to new areas and increased in degree, with the rise of ubiquitous mobile Internet.

It was probably better because at least you were doing the best you could with what you had. There was much self discovery just by living your life.

Also the constant comparison... and constant advertisements convincing you how you should be. We used to be able to just live and commercials were contained in commercial breaks and billboards. Now the content we consume is mixed with commercials in imperceptable manners.

> Now the content we consume is mixed with commercials in imperceptable manners.

Product placement goes back to the 19th century. Remember the candy brand in E.T.? It was chosen because the company paid $1M to get them eaten by the short green man. Then there was payola, wherein the music you heard was actually a commercial paid by the record company.