Abstract
Response to Jacqueline Lipton, Law of the Intermediated Information Exchange
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The Internet was supposed to mean the death of middlemen. Intermediaries would fade into irrelevance, then extinction, with the advent of universal connectivity and many-to-many communication. The list of predicted victims was lengthy: record labels, newspapers, department stores, travel agents, stockbrokers, computer stores, and banks all confronted desuetude. Most commentators lauded the coming obsolescence as empowering consumers and achieving greater efficiency; a few bemoaned it. But disintermediation was inevitable.
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