He quotes Rockefeller in 1989: "The day of combination is here to stay."
The amusing thing is that he writes this just as the era of fragmentation in the US is coming to a close. We have one winner in search - Google. We have one winner in social - Facebook. We're down to a few retail Internet providers, a few big banks, a few big airlines, a few telecom companies, and a few commercial real estate owners per city. There would be more concentration in those sectors without regulatory pushback.
His article is about social fragmentation, not economic. We recognize the economics are consolidating, but we are then talking about hundreds of combinatorial factors leading us to where we are today. Specifically, we are seeing more collective isolationism of social circles - there is an absolute Internet culture of connoisseurs of the blogosphere / reddit / social media today that is distinct from anything before, but you also have all the regional cultures of peoples now splitting from the whole because of incohesion with everyone else. Its harder to fit the mold when the mold broke because it was forged from flimsy material to begin with.
The amusing thing is that he writes this just as the era of fragmentation in the US is coming to a close. We have one winner in search - Google. We have one winner in social - Facebook. We're down to a few retail Internet providers, a few big banks, a few big airlines, a few telecom companies, and a few commercial real estate owners per city. There would be more concentration in those sectors without regulatory pushback.