Closing the Stanford Internet Observatory will edge the US towards the end of democracy

For most of us, the word "medium" means "a channel or system of communication, information, or entertainment". For a biologist, though, the term means something rather different: "the nutrient solution in which cells or organs are grown". But there are times when the two conceptions fuse, and we're living in one such time now. How come? All developed societies have a media ecosystem, the information environment in which they exist. Until comparatively recently that ecosystem was dominated by print technology. Then, in the mid-20th century, broadcast (few-to-many) technology arrived, first as radio and later as television, which, from the 1950s…