It seems to me the biggest "barrier to entry* to ANYthing these days is people's eternally shrinking span of attention... we live in a twitter/Instagram world. I don't envy you the challenge of being an author in a world where few have the ability to focus beyond 140 characters.

And it is, indeed, a "dumbing down." The movie "Idiocracy" keeps running in the back of my mind... and seems far more like a real possibility than Gene Roddenberry's future vision of Star Trek.