Second Superpower

Just more of the same crap we all bought into during the dot com boom, how the internet was going to change everything, erase borders, destroy the nation state, yadda yadda yadda. If you read Wired magazine at this time, it was full of manifestos on cyberspace, John Perry Barlow's "declaration of independence", etc

The way this guy describes punk kid anarchists beating a superpower at the WTO sounds like the pathetic rhetoric we hear about the US being "defeated" by Somalia.

Yes, better communications allows better organization, but it does not neccessarily lead to better communication. He may compare it to the printed word in regular media all he wants, but the vast majority of what people write in email on the net is crap, and if you hear the protestors in these movements speak, they can't put two thoughts together to save their lives. Most of the protest events turn into circuses of ill-thought out focus. The "direct participation" aspect of this so-called "second superpower" lowers the signal-to-noise to the lowest common denominator, which are the idiots to scream and punch, and yell fascist if someone disagrees with them.


I liken this to Email vs a hand written letter. 200 years ago, educated people put much more thought into a letter, the arguments more sound, the prose more poetic. Communication is so easy today, that people write whatever comes out of their stream of consciousness, without stepping back for a few hours to figure out what they want to say.

Exactly like the content of this message.


I predict a swift defeat for this "second superpower" It's a fringe movement (by his own admission, 10%). It lacks money. It lacks influence. It is normally extremist. It usually lacks focus. (Oh, we're protesting the war? No, we're protesting racism. No, we're protesting globalism! No, we're protesting GMO. No, we're protesting capitalism. Hey, everything is the same!)

One republican or democratic politic fund raiser raises 1,000 times more money, and organizes 10x as many people.
 
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