The Revolution is being DIGITZED.

[athelind]

One of the tags in my list is "The Revolution Will Be DIGITIZED". It's a play, of course, on the title of the song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. I first used the phrase as the title of a PoliSci paper I wrote around '92 or '93, concerning the role of new communications technologies in the fall of the Soviet Union and the sociopolitical implications of the then-emerging internet.

I've used the tag for a variety of reasons since I introduced it a couple of years ago, some overtly political and some ... less than revolutionary. Yesterday's Writer's Block post was the first time I really felt that I was using it in the sense I originally intended, back when I first wrote that paper.

Yes. The Internet, the cell phone, GPS/GIS, desktop publishing and 3D printing ... this is world-changing technology. It has changed the world. If you're reading this, it has changed your everyday life, the things that you consider "normal" and "routine".

And it is poised to change it even more. It's facilitating real revolution, producing "regime change" more deep-seated than invasion, occupation, and installation of "reliable" puppets ever could.

Mightier than the sword indeed, my friends.

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Cross-posted to unitarian_jihad.

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Comments

[zeeth_kyrah]

It's a question of who reminds the soldiers of their duty: the People are the highest authority in the Constitution, even if most civilians can't give them orders; but someone will argue to shoot because you're told because somehow the People are contravening the Constitution by petitioning for redress of grievances.

[castleclear.livejournal.com]

Presumably that in part is the reason for the watering down in the quality of U.S. public education K-12 so that the populace is less educated and less informed than the one that preceded it. Further, our culture extols the Entertainment industy (in which I lump the sports guilds of the NFL, AFL, NBA and so on), revering Celebrity, youthful good looks and money, whilst denigrating education and other homely values.