a new generation of middlemen (and they were mostly men) and of publishers, record label executives and film producers. Quantity became quality, and art lost some of its “aura”, as Walter Benjamin, a philosopher, argued in his essay “The work of art in an age of mechanical reproduction”, published in 1935.

At the end of the 20th century, though, what had been commodified started to dematerialise. Culture that had come in a physical form, whether on vinyl (or CD ) or printed on paper, started to be delivered digitally, something to which consumers were unused and for which they initially proved unwilling to pay. Music revenues fell from $24bn in 1999 to $15bn in 2010 and have stayed at roughly that level since. Newspapers suffered a similarly steep decline.by

As of June 28, the death toll in Nicaragua has reached 285, with more than 1,500 wounded. The country is divided, trying to make sense of the violence and the political climate that surrounds it. In the United States, making sense of the current narrative is nearly impossible. It seems that there is one narrative passing through the mainstream news cycle on repeat like an echo chamber. According to this narrative, President Daniel Ortega is authoritarian. He cut pensions. People protested. Ortega responded violently, killing still climbing numbers of protestors. Ortega must go, and the United States must support him, in the name of democracy. But reality is rarely that simple. This article is not a defense of the Ortega administration. It does not seek to condone or