scrutiny. The transactions offered by Uber and Airbnb – enormously useful – are not about sharing: they are a rental agreement, that’s all. And there are discounts to the real rental costs, which are absorbed by the unlevel playing fields in which they operate and which the user does not see. These platforms disintermediate, but they are not truly disruptive. If you really want to share a house/room, I suggest couchsurfing.com. As the internet has had to become more commercial, it has evolved into a set of highly vested media interests. It is these, much more than governments, which have given shape to the chaos. They have engaged in an orgy of wall building, and the gardens behind the walls have become chargeable properties. Entirely understandably, they have created a rhetoric of digital advertising that supports their agenda. It has a number of themes, including: • It’s all or nothing: either you are with us or against us. Old media are irretrievably dead: as of now. • This is the world of new. Only new matters. This new is unlike any other previous new in every way possible. It is the rhetoric of digital exclusivity and of digital exceptionalism. It is not so much philosophically driven as rooted in the hard need to attract advertising dollars; but it has become implicit in a raft of journalism and writing, and most books written on the Digital Revolution follow the theme.