Kurt Andersen has a great piece in Vanity Fair (January 2012) called "You Say You Want a Devolution?" whose premise is that popular culture, over the past 20 years, has not kept up with technology or science, simply repeating itself.

Gaga haters will love that she is shown alongside Madonna (above)—and in the same issue sporting a Gaga cover!—but the article isn't so much about Gaga as a recycler as it is about how in the 20th Century, massive pop cultural shifts came every 20 years or so, but for the past 20 years, our music and fashion and architecture and more have remained comparatively static.

Worth a read; I'll link it when it's online.