Do We Need Experts To Understand Trump?

I am in the process of writing a book which will hopefully do for the internet what Marshall McLuhan did for TV, namely, to explain how this latest communication technology has transformed the way in which we receive information and share what we learn with everyone else.

My book will also attempt to look at how a digital communication environment has changed how we choose the kind of information we share, and how these choices create the culture which defines the community in which ww live.

In that respect, what seems to me to be the major change in our everyday culture is the degree to which so much of our informational media is focused on current political events, which in the pre-internet days only became an important informational element around election time.

Of course, part of this new informational environment reflects the degree to which political campaigns are longer, costlier and in the case of our current soon-to-be President again, never seem to end.

Not only does Trump continue to appear regularly in front of large, public crowds, but his daily (or I should say nightly) messaging first on Twitter and now on his own website have created an archive of political commentary which probably exceeds the total number of words produced by every previous Oval Office occupant going back at least…