From Institutions to Algorithms
The shift from one-to-many trust systems to many-to-many chaos is reshaping everything—from politics to mental health.
One afternoon recently—deep in the middle of some dopamine-fueled scrolling—I came across a tweet that caused me to pause. It echoed something I’ve been thinking about: the Internet hasn’t just changed how we work or learn—it’s changing who we are.
As a sociologist by training and technologist by trade, I’ve long been fascinated by the cultural shifts that follow big tech revolutions. While smartphones often get the blame, the real story starts earlier. The Internet gave us instant, low-cost ways to connect—but at the expense of face-to-face community, trusted institutions, and shared narratives. That tradeoff is now reshaping everything.
Back in 2016, during a keynote at EDUCAUSE, I argued that Hillary Clinton’s predicted win might not materialize—not because the polls were flawed, but because they assumed a world where traditional media still served as the central gatekeeper of public opinion. That one-to-many model—broadcast news, expert commentary, mass messaging—had already been eclipsed by the Internet’s many-to-many dynamic. Trump, I suggested then, had a real shot—not because he defied the odds, but because he understood how to bypass the old gatekeepers and shape opinion directly.
Today’s Dispatch explores how the Internet, smartphones, and AI have accelerated the shift from traditional social frameworks to fragile, algorithm-driven networks of constant digital connection. As gatekeepers lost influence, trust in institutions eroded, leaving us more connected but less grounded. This shift reshapes politics and mental health, and it’s time we reckon with what we’ve built.
The big picture
As I’ve written before, 1993, 2007, and 2022 weren’t just milestones in tech—they were tectonic shifts that reshaped our culture, communities, and economy.
In 1993, the Internet connected us.
In 2007, the smartphone made constant connectivity portable.
In 2022, AI began learning who we are.
These weren’t just new tools. Each shift changed how we relate to information, institutions, and each other. We’ve traded face-to-face communities for frictionless digital connections—and the ripple effects are only beginning to show.
1993: The Internet collapses the middle
The Internet's original promise was empowerment: anyone could publish, connect, and create. But that power came with a tradeoff.
Institutions—churches, schools, community centers, newspapers—once mediated how we connected and communicated. They curated norms, created shared expectations, and acted as guardrails for behavior.
But as the Internet-enabled direct person-to-person communication, those institutions became optional—and, in many cases, irrelevant.
What changed: We moved from a one-to-many world, where institutions mediated relationships, to a many-to-many environment, where anyone can say anything to everyone at any time. Filters that enforced quality, accountability, and shared norms disappeared, replaced by speed, volume, and noise. Authority is contested, trust is fractured, and the loudest voices, not the wisest, often carry the most weight.
2007: The smartphone makes it constant
The iPhone didn’t just put the Internet in our pockets. It made the connection continuous.
Social media, messaging, and mobile apps let us replace face-to-face engagement with scrolling, sharing, and reacting.
Dopamine-driven apps turned passive consumption into compulsive behavior.
People became less civil, less connected, and more polarized—not because they changed, but because their context did.
What changed: Even our most casual relationships became digitally mediated. The smartphone blurred the boundary between public and private life, turning every moment into a potential interaction. Connection became constant—scrolling, refreshing—and attention became the currency of the realm. But the more connected we became, the more fragmented we felt. What promised to bring us closer began to isolate us instead.
2022: AI begins shaping what we believe
AI didn’t invent the echo chamber—but it perfected it.
Machine learning models now determine what we see, hear, and read—driven by what we’ve liked, clicked, or paused on before.
These systems don’t educate. They reinforce. Every engagement sharpens the algorithm’s picture of who we are.
And because it works, it sticks. We trust what’s familiar—and that makes us vulnerable to misinformation, polarization, and manipulation.
What changed: Traditional institutions—media, universities, civic groups—lost their central role as curators of shared truth. They couldn’t compete with AI-driven feeds: too slow, too subtle, too balanced. In their place, algorithms learned who we are and fed us back to ourselves—shaping our reality in real-time. We stopped consuming information broadly and started living inside narrow, personalized loops.
Why it matters
This is about more than tech. It’s about culture, society, and trust.
Anxiety, loneliness, and division aren’t random—they’re structural. The scaffolding of connection has changed.
Institutions aren’t perfect—but they gave us stability, shared expectations, and belonging.
In the digital world, those roles are filled by algorithms, platforms, and the loudest voices. And it’s making our relationships—and our politics—more brittle.
The collapse of one-to-many systems and the rise of many-to-many chaos isn’t just disorienting—it’s destabilizing. In a world with fewer trusted gatekeepers and more algorithmic noise, it’s harder to find common ground, harder to tell truth from manipulation, and harder to build the kind of shared understanding that stable societies depend on.
What’s next
There’s no going back—but there are paths forward.
Rebuild hybrid communities: In-person connection still matters. We need institutions that live in both physical and digital spaces.
Reframe tech design: The goal isn’t just engagement. It’s human flourishing. We need algorithms that encourage reflection, not just reaction.
Teach civic resilience: Millennials and Gen Z doesn’t need more screen time skills—they need trust-building skills. Media literacy. Empathy. Dialogue.
If many-to-many is the world we’ve built, then it’s also the world we can shape. The institutions we left behind won’t come back as they were—but we have the opportunity to create new ones, grounded in trust, community, and intentional connection. Maybe it starts with something simple: putting the phone down, looking up, and choosing to reconnect—in person, with purpose.