To understand, first we need to delve back into pre-industrial revolution days when people gathered at the market or ancient agora, bought and sold goods and most importantly engaged in conversations. Conversations not just about the weather but about the buyers and the sellers in the market. The good ones and the dodgy ones. The link between buyer and seller was very short indeed. As the writers of The Cluetrain Manifesto point out repeatedly.
Markets are conversations.
Anyway, along came the good old industrial revolution. Machines, factories and the concept of a job were all invented and the basic fabric of our way of life was changed forever. Henry Ford perfected the process and we all got specialised, or rather we were in fact de-skilled. The concept of craft was lost to mass marketing, mass media, mass production and the gap between buyer and seller became huge. Conversation as the foundation of markets was, if not actually lost, then certainly missing in action.