The Revolt of The Public
and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millenium
How insurgencies — enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere — have mobilised millions of ordinary people around the world.
In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilised millions of ordinary people around the world.
Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organising principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.
Martin Gurri is a geopolitical analyst and student of new media and information effects. He spent many years working in the corner of the CIA dedicated to the analysis of open media. From that privileged perch, he watched the global information landscape undergo a transformation so radical as to seem unprecedented in the history of our species. After leaving government, Gurri focused his research on the motive forces powering this transformation. The result of this labor is The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, first published in digital form in 2014 and republished in 2018. He lives in Virginia.
