While I def. agree that public culture has been disappearing over the last x years/decades, i wouldn’t frame it as the Internet being *responsible.* I think if anything it’s a kind of counter to the general lack of “meatspace” public space.

Do you know a book by Samuel R. Delany, “Times Square Red, Times Square Blue,” btw? he talks a lot about the demise of the commons, and particularly wrt what happened to Times Square with gentrification, and the democratic possibilities of public sex in the old porn theatres. i thought i had it but maybe not. anyway it could be that he did specifically mention the internet, but i don’t remember it. i sort of had the impression that his observations, if not the book itself, long predated the ‘Net.