In his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin prefigured some of the current contradictions. He quotes from Paul Valery as an epigram. At the conclusion of the quote, Valery suggests that

Benjamin suggested that future changes to the means of production would result in more intensive exploitation of the proletariat and ‘ultimately … create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism altogether’ (217). This is useful with regards to Marx's prescription of ongoing crises in surplus value resulting in a declining rate of profit as specific points in the trade cycle. One such point was reached by the conclusion of the 1990s, in that the internet had exposed a crisis of profitability in the production of most books, and in the case of magazines, of sustainability.

At the conclusion of the twentieth century, Eric Hobsbawn summarised the contradiction inscribed within the changes. He noted, as I hope I have demonstrated, that the arts are not inseparable ‘from their contemporary context, as a branch or type of human activity subject to its own rules, and capable of being judged accordingly’. He added that

Put another way, cultural works are no longer purely superstructural expressions. On the contrary, they are among the basic processes in the formation of the economic substructure itself. The internet is an example of this, but the deconstruction of the binary between high and popular that was convenient to representations in less complex times is only a part of the story. Technological change had also created a fracturing of the public sphere and instigated narrow communities of interest, and a frantic, repressed desire for hierarchical distinction — the literary magazines of Australia were partial evidence of that.