From a Wall Street Journal review by Barton Swaim of the book by Gal Beckerman titled “The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas”:

The conviction animating Gal Beckerman’s “The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas” holds that social media, and online communications generally, are not optimal venues for the development of “radical” ideas. What radical ideas need in order to flourish, he contends, is sustained, patient debate among committed people with a shared, well-defined ideology. In the past these ideas percolated for a long time in pubs and coffeehouses, pamphlets and small-circulation dissident newspapers, before they burst into public life in the fullness of time.