Earlier quoted context omitted.
"wasn't so obsessed with ... celebrity"? Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_magazine : > This genre of magazine flourished in North America in the 1950s and early 1960s. The title Confidential alone boasted a monthly circulation in excess of ten million, and it had many competitors, with names like Whisper, Dare, Suppressed, The Lowdown, Hush-Hush, and Uncensored. These magazines included more lurid and…
Things are different now. 24-hour news cycle, realtime reporting of celebrity activities, celebrity images managed by a team of experts...
Bobby Fischer was obsessed with chess. Modern chess players have access to a lot more information about chess; records of all of the chess tournament plays, high quality chess computers, on-line play. That doesn't mean that Booby Fischer was less obsessed than modern players.
Newton in his early years was obsessed with science. Modern scientists have access to an entire industry and government infrastructure for supporting science. That doesn't mean that modern scientists are fundamentally more obsessed about science than Newton was.