"[W]hile the more egregious examples of incivility and intolerance, magnified by the mass media and mass markets, may give us a momentary sense of despair, the same developments in technology and mass communications offer ample opportunity -- if we seize them with energetic creativity and imagination -- to balance the incivility with a more dialogical and useful discourse. The accumulating changes of two centuries of urbanization, exploration, economic expansion, social and political development, technological invention, and explosive growth in knowledge and professional expertise are bearing fruit. From within the dominant paradigm of mass-market democratic capitalism, now almost global in acceptance, these forces are creating a world of enormous risk -- but also enormous potential...."
-- Stephen P. Steinberg, Public Discourse in America: Conversation and Community in the Twenty-First Century (ed. Judith Rodin, Stephen P. Steinberg)
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