Imagine the reaction on Twitter if Darwin published the Origin of Species today. It was bad enough for him at the time, but imagine what it would be like now. If he had an employer, there's a significant chance he'd be fired.
We think of social media as a way to exchange ideas, but although it's undoubtedly a way to exchange conventional ideas with people who already agree with them, I worry it might actually suppress some of the biggest ideas.
And by suppress, I don't mean just that Darwin would not have been actively tweeting about evolution. I mean he might have actually been less likely to follow up his initial ideas about it.
