The Techno-Communitarian platform is a turbocharged version of the New Democrat agenda that surfaced in Clinton's 1992 campaign, only to sink in his presidency: downsizing and deregulation combined with targeted federal initiatives in education, training, research, infrastructure, and the reclaiming of the inner cities. Techno-Communitarians want ineffective federal job-training programs replaced by vouchers, not eliminated; they would rather reform public education through the creation of charter schools than issue vouchers to parents who could opt out to private schools.

It is, the Techno-Communitarians argue, simply naive (one of their favorite words) to expect an unregulated free market to ensure a skilled workforce, adequate infrastructure, or sufficient support for basic research. "The proper role for government," says Carlson, "is to make long-term investments for the good of the American people. I can tell you that as the CEO of a public company, I have never had one shareholder come to me yet and ask if I am making the right long-term investments for the good of the American people."

The End of Monopoly Politics

At century's end, American politics is in a state of decomposition; neither party now commands a stable majority of public support. Pollsters and analysts offer many explanations for this political insecurity. But the most important may be a collective sense in America that we have crossed into a period of lasting change. If there is a single root of the two parties' declining hold on the public's imagination, it may be the unspoken and unsettling conviction that, as America goes through this transition, both parties are trapped on the wrong side of history.

This has happened before. In the last quarter of the 19th century, as the nation moved from farm to city, small shop to giant factory, both political parties appeared unable to adapt their vision of minimalist government to the changed circumstances. Inadequate to the challenge, neither side could win the country's allegiance. From 1876 through 1896, the nation ricocheted through five consecutive one-term presidents, repeatedly shifted control of Congress, and witnessed a proliferation of third-party movements capped by the emergence of the anti-big business Populist Party.

It was not until the turn of the century and the dawn of the Progressive Era that the nation reached a new consensus: rather than vainly struggle to reverse the turbulent economic change that had created huge corporations and controlling trusts, the country would fortify the government in Washington to counterbalance the new private economic power. That bargain lasted almost a century. But the political machinery that ran it has now plainly collapsed, along with the Industrial Age economy that spawned it.

Today we are again at a moment of transition, searching for a new political order to match the challenges of a new economic order. Like the Progressives a century ago, the Cyber-Libertarians and Techno-Communitarians agree on the futility of trying to hold back the tide of change. Yet they fundamentally diverge on how to manage it or whether it should be managed at all. There is no easy point of connection between these contrasting visions of the future; they are moving at diverging angles and accelerating speeds. The widening space between the Techno-Communitarians and Cyber-Libertarians offers a preview of what American politics will look like as we grope toward a new social bargain to manage the Information Age.

With that consensus still far beyond our reach, the electronic message flashing on the screen is short and bracing. It reads: From the new economy to the old politics -- Game Over.

Ronald Brownstein (ronald.brownstein@latimes.com) is national political correspondent for the Los Angeles "Times" and the coauthor of "Storming the Gates: Protest Politics and the Republican Revival" (Little Brown, 1996) . He appears regularly on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Sidebar: The Politics of Business

Is the new economy dangerously polarizing America? This is the question at the heart of the divide between Cyber-Libertarians and Techno-Communitarians. Cyber-Libertarians either reject the idea that anything is wrong at all or suggest that, if there is a problem, government efforts to address it will only make it worse. Techno-Communitarians see the Information Age ominously separating the United States into a two-tier society, with high wages for workers with advanced skills and education and relentless downward pressure on the living standards of the less-skilled.