THE PLOT TO KILL LUCY & WALTER; OR THE CONSPIRACY OF INEXORABILITY

Now here's a documentable national conspiracy, but with a twist. In this case, no one pulled the trigger...!

Start with the facts. A few generations ago there were three major networks and no cable; today at least a dozen major networks and over 1000 cable channels. Then there were eight national magazines; today the number exceeds 100. Then there were a few great city newspapers; today aspiring ones proliferate in every byte on the Internet, Then the national conversations were informally held over backyard fences, barbershops and beauty salons; today they exist by the tens of millions throughout the virtual communities thriving on websites, facebooks, and tweets.

What do these have to do with the death of "I Love Lucy" and "The Nightly News with Walter Cronkite?" To be sure, it was an unplanned plot! No one trigger finger. It's best described as the inexorability of communication technology. Once unleashed, there was neither the will nor the way to stop it. Gradually national readerships that once gathered around their "Tribune," "Life," "Saturday Evening Post," and "Reader's Digest" drifted away. The vast national audiences that once gathered around their sets for Lucy and Walter to provide them a consensus of comedy and coverage likewise drifted away.

Technology has granted us the gift of choice. Three hundred million minds no longer tethered to any one common source of entertainment or information. Extending the logic of the Founding Fathers' freedom-of- speech, now humor and ideas have blossomed into an exponential symphony of sounds. It's the old neighborhood movie house and community town hall meeting become universal!

A foundational idea in democracy has always been there can never be too many voices; the only danger is too few choices. Choice is the fuel that fires the flame, that keeps the tyrants and oligarchs at bay. A spirit of freedom comes with choice, like the spirit of a stallion without a saddle its mane flying majestically in the winds.

As we now blow in the technological winds of our unlimited cablecasting, blogging, facebooking and tweeting, there's been the initial flush that comes with all freedom. This sense that at long last my voice, my ideas, my 24/7 spontaneity of expression have reached their inevitable apotheosis.

And they have, with all their stunning rewards....! But as always there's a but....!

As this brave new inexorability of technology frees us like 300 million school kids bursting out of class on the last days of June, we are left to consider what the mane-flying stallion must ask at the end of his race. Quo Vadis? Where are we going with this wisp-of-the-wind liberty of writing, blogging, and tweeting every hour of every day? We have each become our own citizen-journalist, our own citizen-government.

No nation in history has experienced quite this degree of choice. Or this size of challenge. A magnificent study in abundance in search of achievement. What will be the results?

Stay tuned -- you certainly have enough sources to tune into!