I don't think anyone is suggesting that people are not individuals.
Compulsory universal literacy created the literate individual, and the voluntary electric media such as telephone, radio, TV, and the internet, create electronic tribes.
So the literate individual is now the content of the electric media.
So the literate individual is in effect obsolete. And being obsolete rises in status. So we have 320 million Americans each saying,
I am an individual, I am an individual, I am an individual ............
But we live in an electric world where God is dead, the individual is dead, and the author is dead. But we cling onto them as though our life depends on it. But it is literacy that depends on God, the individual, and the author.
We invented the printing press in 1440 and the very first book we printed was the Bible and the Bible gave us God, the individual, and the author.
We were called
the people of the book: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But we are no longer the people of the book, we are the people of the electric media, just look in front of you now.
In the book the author gives the meaning to the text. For instance, in the Bible God gives the meaning to the text. But in the electric media the response in real time gives the meaning to the etext. So in the electric media we say,
the meaning of any communication is its response.
The individual is dead.