Was the WWW the amphitheater? Was twitter?

"There’s only been one democracy, and that was ancient Athens.

"Wait, I said, what about the Iroquois? The Althing? Burnaby’s Code?

"Ok, fine, he said. Athens is the one I know about. But let me tell you about Athens, because it’s worth hearing. They were different from the nations around them, because all citizens held sovereignty, and when they made decisions they got together in an amphitheater, as a city, as a country, and talked it out, sometimes at great length, and when they had to, they voted. He held up his hand, I know you’ll object to this next part, he said, but hear me out. 

"Citizenship was limited to property-owning males. And some of the property they owned or believed they owned was other people. And that was probably their undoing, because the rich men in the amphitheater lost touch with the actual conditions of the country’s farms and military.

"John [A. Jackson] thought the problem was they just didn’t have a big enough amphitheater. If they’d listened to women, to workers, to soldiers. Listening to people, that was his newspaper creed. He told me when he was an editor he used to let the homeless come into his office, sit by his desk, and tell him their crazy for hours.

"'Why did you do that?'

"'It was my job.'

"He was crazy about the nascent internet, which he called the World Wide Wait. Because now we finally almost had it, see? An amphitheater big enough for everyone."