Ryan J. Suto's Blog

06 October 2011

The New World

Information has broadened
More people are able to access information than ever before. The internet, social media and cell phones have distributed information wider and faster than imaginable only twenty years ago. Information and news about any incident on any part of the Earth can travel to your hand or home instantly. While many in the world remain without access or ability to receive such media, the Arab Spring has shown that around the globe, the people increasingly control messaging.
No longer must we rely on the ‘gatekeepers’ to tell us what is important and what is interesting. Websites like Reddit, Twitter, Digg, and more allow we the people to decide for ourselves.

Power has democratized
According to Freedom House In the early 1970s, there were around 40 democracies. Presently, there are over 120, with more on the way. Increasingly, people are making decisions which effect governance and foreign relations. Periods like decolonalization, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Arab Spring show a clear march toward self-determination and democracy. Increasingly, regular people will be able to have a voice in the direction of their government. Governments around the world must listen to their people.
No longer must we rely on elites to communicate our policies and values abroad. We can communicate directly to foreign publics, unmediated and unadulterated, to express our interests and sentiments abroad regarding international concerns. Speaking directly to power now means speaking directly to the people.

Governance has opened
WikiLeaks and Anonymous have shown that now anyone can publish mountains of uncensored data available for the whole world to see. Julian Assange published his leaked information for the world’s publics to see without gatekeeper censorship. If governments do not open themselves by passing Open Government laws and declassifying non-essential material, people like Assange, Bradley Manning, and groups like Anonymous will do it for them.
During the Vietnam War-era, the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times shined the light on the actions of the U.S. Government in Southeast Asia. No longer must we rely on the institutional press to disseminate this information. If we the people wish to know the working of our governments, we have the right, the will, and the power to find out.

Resistance has crowdsourced
The Green Revolution, the Arab Spring, and Wisconsin's protests and #OccupyWallStreet have shown that leader-less protest, resistance, and revolution are all possible and successful. We now can simply crowdsource to define our grievances, goals, desires and needs. Top-down structures are anachronistic and are un-democratic ways to resist the halls of power. Indeed, the present paradigm of such power does not know how to approach a truly egalitarian movement, and thus renders the structure impotent to change in the face of a new global structure.
In the past, revolutions mirrored states: they had a hierarchical structure of authority. No longer must we hope for a Washington, Jefferson, or Madison to come along and lead our movement; we lead the movement ourselves, collectively.

The new world
In the old world, governments, media, military, and economic power was held by elites, influenced and benefitted by each other. Elections and commercial choices were limited and often illusory. However, the changes above are upon us. All of these changes have supported and furthered each other. The combination of all of them has shown to us a new world paradigm of power approaches. We must take this opportunity. We must assert our rights by making our grievances known through this new egalitarian paradigm of power and compel power structures to return to the hands of the people. If we do this we will bring forth a world where real power exists in the hands of all of us, and structures are created to benefit the masses. If we stand up and assert our grievances, we can work together to create the new world.

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