Lee Libby Responds
The beginning of your comments focused on the page authority.html. While I do believe that theory has shifted for the most part from the idea of the author controlling the flow of information to a passive audience, I am not sure that this has translated to most of the people who write for a living. Until I came to graduate school, I still thought that as a writer I had to put the meaning into my work, create a path for the reader, and then lead them down that path to my conclusion.
On the Web, a large portion of the people using the medium are not professional writers and many have no formal training, and it is this group that I had in mind when I was discussion control of discourse. Although I should probably make that more clear in my text.
Also, in the section on why certain works get published and others don't you seemed to feel that some filtering of what is made available is necessary because of efficiency and the limits of attention. I believe publishers and authorities in most fields have used this reasoning to support their own ideas and eliminate many others that do not fit a certain mold. That is why I quoted Kuhn. He states that anomalies drive discovery and I agree. Including as many opinions as possible helps to eliminate bias. Electronic communication is full of "anomalies" (strange and awkward voices) and I hope it stays that way.