It is almost a century since the Michelin brothers had the brainwave of supplementing their motorists’ guide with information about fine-dining establishments. Their star-rating system had become a mainstay of lifestyle reviews long before the Internet came along. In the digital age, this work has been comprehensively crowd-sourced: the immense success of review sites such as Yelp and Amazon has been built on the voluntary input of users.
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Houman Barekat co-edited (with Mike Gonzalez) Arms and the People: Popular Movements and the Military from the Paris Commune to the Arab Spring.
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