There is the democratisation of technology, a long-term trend that creates technologies that the individual can control. Trains allow us to travel in groups, cars let us drive ourselves. Cinemas select films for us, with television we choose our own viewing. Computers were once expensive machines that only big organisations could afford. Today individuals can own and use them.
Technology helps with the democratisation of information.
It is harder for the powerful to control what ordinary people can know. Newspapers, radio and television increased our freedom to receive information. Today the Internet makes us all world-wide publishers. These three processes of democratisation converge in the democratisation of higher education. Today help in understanding the world can come from many sources but most, such as governments and the media, cannot be independent of commercial and political interests.