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The Politics of the Web

Not even 30 years ago, a person with an innovative idea would have had a much harder time getting his idea off the ground. He could use his connections to attempt to get started, but how much would that garner him? Whatever it may have been, unless he pulled the right strings, it was tough to get an idea off the ground.

Fast-forward 30 years. A person has an idea. He makes it reality, takes a video, and posts it on a couple of sites, such as Kickstarter, Facebook, and Twitter. 1 month later, that idea has thousands of dollars of financial support from Kickstarter, as well as endorsements from companies who saw the video on social media sites. Even now, this is a challenge of long odds, but much easier a task than the one the man from the 1980s faced. 

30 years ago, we trusted the news presented to us by a couple of media sources such as radio and television. Today, if we see an interesting story, we read about it from multiple perspectives, searching Google for that article from a different angle. Today, we question our governments more than we would have 30 years ago.

So to what can we attribute this change? Our answer: the increase of the power of the common man in the worldwide social network. 30 years ago, our connections were limited to the people we knew and potentially the people they knew. After that, media would slowly grind to a halt, only have spread to a few people. Today, that video that was uploaded can be watched by a friend, or even an acquaintance who a person in the 1980s would never have thought of talking to, whose friend then sees it. That friend then links another friend to it and so on and so forth. Soon enough, several hundred or a couple thousand people would have heard of it. Then, the idea flies of the ground, while that same idea in the 1980s, though just as innovative, would haven’t even gotten off the launch pad.

30 years ago, a person had to follow the more often than not skewed news he heard from his local news source, thus skewing his opinions in favor of his news source. Now, a person can see multiple different angles and judge for himself. Again, a person who once knew so little, because of the Internet, now knows so much, making knowledge into power.

So we can say that the Nobel Peace Prize should go to the internet. What was once many nodes with no outside options surrounding a couple of powerful central nodes are now connected to each other by the Web. The power of the central nodes remains there; they are still strong, but the power of the common man, with more connections, just got stronger.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/30/future-markets-social-networks

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