An interesting little post on what happens when algorithm (aka, the crowd) takes over from an elite:
How to Have Culture in an Algorithmic Age — The Late Age of Print:
In the old cultural paradigm, you could question authorities about their reasons for selecting particular cultural artifacts as worthy, while dismissing or neglecting others. Not so with algorithmic culture, which wraps abstraction inside of secrecy and sells it back to you as, “the people have spoken.”