Interesting piece. I've been thinking about a related idea for a possible book. The industrialized world is exchanging the old information oligarchy where information is disseminated by a small set of elite sources--television networks, newspapers, culture critics, encyclopedias, etc.--for something more democratic in which information is shared through social networks, blogs, wikis, user reviews, etc.

But democracy implies a rule-governed regime with regular elections. Surveys and elections are democratic. The new information order is full of mass hysteria and demagoguery. Established scientists and economists are ignored; junk science and pseudo-economics flood through our information channels. Political celebrities like Sarah Palin, who holds no office and works for no media outfit, can easily upstage Republican party officials with a 30-character tweet, and her political endorsements can unseat party favorites. The Greeks would call it ochlocracy, mob rule.

Genghis, a couple of thoughts:

1. When most of us used to think of a "tsunami," we thought of the height of the wave. When in reality, the tsunami's impacts come about because of its length, breadth, depth. i.e. Not the peak of the wave, but the extended, rising tide changes the landscape. 

Same here. We all focus - when asked about the internet - on the peaks, the amazing stories. When in reality, I think it's the massive, sustained, ongoing rise in the water level that will forever change our world. (Though yes, I get depressed when I see that Lady Gaga's video has 364,000,000 views.)

But what I've found in my family and friends, is that there are thousands of different sites that are fully engaging people, without the hype, without the great political or cultural wars. And those sites are changing how they see the world, and how they live. Whereas Gaga... I think she's had less impact, even though they've racked up some views.

e.g. I visit a hockey site for the Leafs. Thousands of other people do as well, daily. The site does far more detailed original research than many political sites, engages regularly with the mainstream media, has an exceptionally tight policy around sexist, anti-gay and assholish behaviour, and has created a dozen sports-related memes. If you watched it through a political lens, you'd see that slowly but surely, it is educating male hockey fans away from casual abuse, is working to reduce the violence in the game, it moves people away from "tv watching" responses and toward more sophisticated statistical analysis, etc. 

And now, it is increasingly recognized by the team's owners, as well as the MSM, as being a broad, but also deep, pool of Leaf fan feedback and knowledge - and they directly collar reporters for their bad behaviour now.

That's the obvious politics. 

More than this however, it is engaging person after person to come forward, write, research, think, create jokes, join in, as well as organizing joint events, games, etc. There is almost no way for me to compare this with the pre-internet world, where 2 TV channels, 3 newspaper sports writers, and a couple of magazines shaped how we saw the entire sport.

I see the same for friends/family in relation to gardening sites, family/ancestry research, DIY, steampunk, music, wine, colour, vintage farm equipment, faith, home schooling, song-writing. 

And almost none of it is hype-driven/based. Odd to me, because - judging from the big-name sites - I would have expected it to be all-maniacal screaming, all-the-time. Instead, it's civil, calm, damn near bland at times, and people are eating it up. 

Sometimes, just to reassure myself that there are sane people out there (usually after a visit to Dag), I just hit StumbleUpon. I find it an incredible way to rebuild my faith in human creativity, fun, imagination. Or, I'll just randomly wander through Posterous or some other set of blogs. At times, it almost makes me believe that most of the world is just like my neighbours.... "Canadian."

The difficulty is when we head to the big-shot sites. And when - here in this early age of the Internet - we attempt to figure out some great screaming method or amazing new font or great new ad campaign that will enable us to make money at this. Because when you view those sites, and try to figure out how to replicate their success,you get depressed.

So, my first point is just to make sure you don't miss the rising tide, because the cameras are trained on the whitecaps. And down there, in the deeper daily waters, there's more sanity, more calm, than the media would ever imagine. In fact, it's so "boring" that they can't cover it. That is... not as sensationalist and dumbed down.... People are increasingly well-equipped, knowledgeable in a million areas, and fast-responding... And more power on some of these deep "issue" sites than in, for example, newspapers - and certainly more than twitter.

A final example. Facebook. It's probably the biggest #1 deal out there for people on the Internet. And you know what? It's nightmarishly, horrendously, calm. The media can only cover it when it leads to pedophilia or mobbing or somesuch. But for me and mine? It's a daily conversation, with 1001 new things coming on slow-drip, that changes us.

2. History. A great story, here, that was in the Globe and Mail, about the birth of Hansard. And how London's Mayor Brass Crosby (he of 'bold as brass" fame) was thrown into the Tower of London when "he refused to pass sentence on John Miller, the printer of the London Evening Post, who had enraged Parliament by publishing leaked reports of its debates, which were considered privileged and not for public consumption. Many London newspapers were committing this offence at the time, sometimes thinly disguising the transcripts by using false names for MPs and as meetings of the “Robin Hood Society” or the “Senate of Magna Lilliputia.”" Anyway, eventualy, these came to be called Hansard, after one of the publishers.

http://dougsaunders.net/page/9/

Again and again, the process of that time saw an expansion in public access to information, of public discussion, of public creation and reproduction of their own views, and public entry into worlds once closed to them. 

My old prof Jock Gunn used to research 17th and 18th century political pamphlets. Said that though all we know now are the great names - Hume and Burke and Hobbes and that lot - that many of them were nothing in their day. And that even if we added in formal political history, with laws and prime ministers and such, we were only scrapping the surface. 

But that beneath it, the world was churning with thousands upon thousands of cheaply printed flyers and handbills and dreadfuls and broadsheets, full of millions of political ideas and commentaries and rumours and proposals and slanders. And that the rise and fall of these sheets and their ideas and their heroes and villains in many cases MADE the political events of the day, the ones later rationalized and cleaned up in the biographies and histories, and usually tarted up and given intellectual cover.

Some of Gunn's stuff is here, including discussion of how the 4th Estate became legitimized, the name beginning as a joke... as well as some on how the idea of a "loyal opposition" came to be accepted.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=yYO8-OUGyJ0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Beyo...

So, my second point is that once again, we need to pay attention to the rising tide, even though the historians and the great and the good were focussed on the whitecaps. Because while these forces were utterly condemned by the powerful at the time, as being sensationalistic, dumbed down, ignorant and likely to lead to demagogues... they helped create Hansard, the press as we know it, Parliamentary forms of government, and so on.

3. In each case, these people churning up from below - and their ideas - were thought to trash. Scum. Whether they were pushing forward a transition to the written word... use of the printing press... expansion of the vote... rights of the press... universal public education... etc. And always those same fears - that it would trend toward the sensationalist and be dumbed down. That people were not equipped. And that power would flow to those with the largest audiences (who are evil or idiotic.)

And in ways, I agree with each point. 

For me, the debate should be retargeted toward working out how people are - practically - overcoming those fears and ensuring that these innovations work to.... equip people, raise not lower debates, create constructive new institutions, etc. I see it happening, and feel it happening, but I haven't yet read a good piece on how that's happening.

And two wonderful quick hits:

http://wondermark.com/socrates-vs-writing/

http://wondermark.com/true-stuff-monk-vs-press/