I was driving to work (a foreign experience) and Joe Walsh was singing about a Maserati. And it made me thing “man, if you grew up in middle America, hearing about a Maserati, you might not even know what it was, let alone that it existed”. Now you can hit Google and see millions of pictures, join the fan club, watch hours of videos and reviews, and become an arm chair Maserati expert. Which is cool, but if sort of takes away the mystique behind things. You wouldn’t even know how it was spelled unless you had the album itself and the artist included lyrics.

Similarly with guitar, it would have been almost impossible to figure out what type of pedal someone was using to get “that sound” without interacting with other humans in person. And I think that served as a filter for people who cared and also led to interesting introductions and local experts (music shops and store owners, etc).

I think that’s what we lose. And while I think converging to average makes sense, I think peoples tastes have shifted to quality in more areas, because they can quickly google and see what the best looks like. And most people will use debt to get there.