Of all the works featured at the 1970 Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art exhibition it is the work A.I.R. by Les Levine (1935) which clearly stand out as being very applicable to contemporary developments in life and technology.
A.I.R. is a group of television units displaying activity in Levine's studio space, which the idea of showing the artist in its natural habitat. Originally intended as being a live broadcast (which was replace for this exhibition with a pre-recorded video due to technical restraints), it gave the observer a voyeuristic look into the life of Les Levine. This with the intention to create a closer connection with general culture and art.
The idea of individuals broadcasting their own media wasn't very common at the time. If they did this was usually limited to local radio, zines, etc. True decentralisation in media only really started at the beginning of the internet age. With the enthusiasm and optimism as Les Levine, it was thought that the freedom, openness and decentralisedness of the internet would bring people closer together and free knowledge from their silos. This indeed all happend, but the utopian nature of the internet age really started crumbling during the Web 2.0 era. This was the age of Web Services with open APIs. While these are in the original spirit of the internet and the world wide web, it also made it easier than ever to exploit the openness by which people expose themselves on the internet. This eventually led to a decline in the openness of the medium. But its impact on how we communicate, create and consume media is irreversible.