July 13, 2013

Bottom-Up Government

By Thomas Burke
Ron Fournier in the National Journal recently wrote about "The End of Government as We Know It." His piece centers around the theories of a writer named Nicco Mele, author of "The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath." Mele states that "our institutions have in fact failed us," and argues that radical connectivity -- the always-on ability to instantaneously transfer massive amounts of data, afforded by Facebook, Twitter, and other social media -- engenders a "bottom-up ethos" that now pervades society. Contemporary culture expects progress and social change not through giant organizations, but through these human grassroots networks that have germinated primarily within the Internet. This ethos, Mele claims, is fundamentally redefining the relationship of the individual not only to government, but to every major institution: "businesses, entertainment, military, schools, media, religion." Fournier takes this further to state that in order to function in the future...(Read Full Article)