We're becoming more monolithic rather than less. For example, innovations like parcel post, rural free delivery, and rural electrification brought the experience of living in rural America closer to that of living in a city. More recently, communications advances like the telephone, radio/television, and now the internet–not to mention the rise of the Dayton-Hudsons and Wal-Marts–have tended to increase, not fragment, homogenization of daily experience relative to previous class and geographic boundaries.

One might say it is becoming easier to be aware of certain details of difference, because our tools are better, but does that translate into significantly increased fragmentation at the level of everyday life?

The point is better read–and the post ultimately gets there–in the limited sphere of considering how a large business communicates with existing and potential customers, and that there are fewer means of reaching many people at once (otherwise, why are Super Bowl ads so expensive). The post would be helped by better defining the set of corporations that are its focus–plenty of corporations are small businesses that have been doing these kinds of things since their founding.

Think back to the auto market of the 1960s and 1970s. US firms dominated the cultural meaning space with their brands and makes and models. Toyota and Datsun and Honda were meaning-lite interlopers selling cheapness and later reliability and later fun. They absorbed cultural meaning–being for smarter more cosmopolitan types–only AFTER they had established their functional bona fides as price/quality champions. Functionality created an aura of integrity and sprightliness that shifted the meaning and status hierarchy of the auto brands over time.

Now Toyota is struggling with excessive growth in capacity (chasing market share for its own sake) and conformance quality problems but retains its brand meaning–for now. Hyundai is coming up on the inside rail with superior price/performance, leading some of the more car-conscious types to say that "Toyota is the new GM and Hyundai is the new Toyota." Of course, it is by no means predestined that Toyota will react as dysfunctionally as GM did to its challenge–for one thing its new president Toyoda is aware that things are coming a bit unglued. The point is that superior meaning is hard to maintain without superior or equal price/performance.

Note that P&G is busy coming up with cheapy versions of its flagship products to stave off competitors with the simpler value proposition of "almost as good and a lot lower price." Even Lafley's anthropological view cannot bypass the need to solve customers' narrow problems ("whiter than white") in an economically sensible way.

When exactly were we a "monolithic society"? Was it two generations ago, when my neighborhood was populated by five distinct ethnic groups, each with its own subculture and native-language speakers? Or was it a few generations before that when European and Asian immigrants went West and interacted with Native Americans?

What American generation has NOT felt that they were undergoing great changes? While we're at it were these cultural "asymmetries" present when our great-grandparents made their own music at home or in church? (Or doesn't that count as being a "culture producer" since it didn't happen on the Internet?)

You're talking a lot about "new," but I can't help but think of how often we've repeated these same patterns.