"The pressure toward merger, and the natural desire of companies to thwart competition and recreate monopoly, will for the forseeable future be the real impact of the Internet on politics—and by extension on culture.  A monopoly in the steel industry only raises prices.  Monopoly in media and communications has more profound effects.  The revised edition of Robert McChesney's 1999 book  Rich Media, Poor Democracy* documents the way previous alliances in the media world are being extended to the Internet.  McChesney, a professor at the University of Illinois, is the current leading practitioner of the A. J. Liebling - I. F. Stone school of analyzing press content by analyzing press ownership.  His book chronicles the ways in which the growth of media chains has meant a contraction of range of opinions.  This book is the latest documentation of a familiar but convincing argument that as "news" becomes just another product sold by big media companies, it becomes more of a commodity, more entertainment-based, and dumbed-down.  The Internet makes it possible for individuals to set up their own news sites, McChesney says, but that's no substitute for "real" news organizations: 

As a rule, journalism is not something that can be done piecemeal by amateurs working in their spare time.  It is best done by people who make a living at it, and who have training, experience, and resources... The corporate media giants have failed miserably to provide a viable journalism, and as they dominate the journalism online, there is no reason to expect anything different."

"Seeing" science—and not just learning it— requires that we work hard, think hard, and stretch our abilities so that we may develop those abilities.  The media, and especially the news and advertising media, have worked hard to tempt us into taking the attractive route of taking it easy, thinking as little as possible, and dumbing down as much as possible.

But we are in a new age, an age of scientific knowledge that has led to an age of high technology.  Taking it easy and dumbing down might be attractive, but it will blind a person to the oncoming intellectual juggernaut that will knock him into the gutter for the dumb.  Societies of the dumb will be playing with high-tech toys—like nuclear weapons and atmosphere- or DNA-destroying machines—that can snuff out species like the meteor snuffed out the dinosaurs.

Evolution has not gone to sleep on Homo sapiens.  He who thinks evolution is a phantom of the minds of heretics simply doesn't comprehend the simple but subtle ways of Mother Nature.  She plays with toys that eliminate creatures who fail to comprehend and effectively respond to her challenges. "Nature is full of traps for the beast that cannot learn."

This spider has something to show us.