“But as the digital revolution has created new forms of communal engagement, it has accelerated a rot within society. Digitalization has decimated local communities, and traditional affiliations have weakened as younger generations have shifted their lives online. Was this a Faustian bargain? We have gotten convenience and efficiency at the cost of losing civic engagement, intimacy, and authenticity. In this we again hear the echo of the poet Oliver Goldsmith: 'Wealth accumulates, and men decay.' Amid such dislocations, people are drawn to fringe online communities--or even reject modernity itself, turning away from liberal democracy, economic growth, and technological progress.”