Open question: I really don't have any ready answer for that one...
My basic assumption is that mankind has always been different. Every period and situation of history can be construed as a "system" involving specific political, economical, social and technical conditions and a corresponding set of ideas, or beliefs, allowing for a certain type of self-, community- and world-understanding.
Just to follow one particular line among many:
- Jewish monotheism emerged under the Persian empire, with its first attempt at "world" organisation, borne by a strong moral dualistic philosophy and at the same time very tolerant of ethnical differences: providing a moral law code acceptable to the central (but remote) authority was essential.
- Christianity arose in the cosmopolitan context of the pax romana, building on the previous diffusion of Hellenistic language and culture throughout the empire and craving for unity beyond differences: the network of ekklesiae with a local authority system but an increasingly common belief system proved remarkably efficient.
- The Protestant Reformation is unseparable from the invention of printing, the European discovery of America and Renaissance Humanism.
- Adventism (including Russellism), just as contemporary secular socialistic utopiae, developed in the wake of the industrial revolutions with the immense mass of hope and frustrations that followed; it was also the time of journalism.
- Rutherford's JWs were organised after a totalitarian and apocalyptical model in the time of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin, which all made great use of radio broadcasting.
- More recently religious movements have used television as much as they could (notably in the U.S.A.), as did politicians in a representative democracy context (the Watchtower has mainly skipped that one, let alone the next).
Shortly put, ideas don't fall from heaven, and they depend on material circumstances, especially communication techniques and possibilities. And in turn they change people: the hearer of a sacred text in a sacred language which s/he barely understands differs from the hearer of a universal, everyday language common to different communities, from the reader of a printed book in vernacular language, from the reader of newspapers and magazines, from the listener of authoritative radio broadcasts, from the TV watcher/consumer, and so on. Different mind structures and behaviours.
We are just a few years into the Internet era, which means that a tremendous mass of contradictory and largely unverifiable "information" has been made available to most people in the world in a fresh, picturally attractive and interactive way. This new medium is related to the political and economical fact of globalisation, which makes cultural isolation nearly impossible.
What kind of (successful) ideas and people will this new context produce? Will the next Internet generations be harder or easier to control? What types of self- and world-understandings are they likely to buy into? We are probably in the worst position to know, because we are just too involved in the process: we lack the distance for judgement and prognosis, because we are making it happen, together and against one another at the same time.
"Wait and see" is, of course, the easiest answer. "Back" doesn't seem to be an option.
Still it is even more important trying to ponder imo: because we are involved, this becomes an ethical question as well.