From time-to-time new technologies provide us with a qualitatively different ability to engage in previously possible activities. For example, 20 years ago it was already possible to publish an essay online. You simply used the command line program Telnet to login to a remote server, navigated into the directory from which your webserver made html files available to the public, launched the pico editor from the command line, wrote your essay, and manually added all the necessary html tags. Today, open-source blogging software like WordPress makes publishing an essay online as easy as using a word processor. Yes, it was possible to publish essays online before, but the modern experience is qualitatively different.