The internet, politics, and government
"It is so important for information and ideas to flow freely over the internet and through the media," Obama said told an audience of about 200 U.S. and Chinese students at Beijing's prestigious Peking University.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/23/us-china-usa-obama-idUSBREA2J0QF20140323
What has been the internet's effect on politics and government in the last two decades?
I think that there are mainly two:
1.
Politics has become more splintered and diverse. The masses have begun to broadcast and socialize on their own, without the intermediation of media companies. Consequently, the social unity once fostered by first newspapers, then radio, then television mass media is starting to dissolve. It becomes far more difficult to maintain two political parties based on modestly different viewpoints shared by two cohesive groupings of society. Far more people coalesce around single issues, and multiple subgroups are forming. These groups can easily communicate and coordinate among themselves, and formulate strategies and tactics without the need for official leadership. This is a trend that was most visible in the various color revolutions, but it is continuing in places like Ukraine, Thailand, and Venezuela at the moment.
2.
Government control is show to be less effective than thought. In the early 1900s, a few empires ruled most of the world. They did so because they ruled without doing much governing. The capitols collected taxes and maintained borders, but the provinces and colonies got on with life as usual. Good or bad, governing was largely local, and not from the capitol. The totalitarian state, with its direct involvement in the lives of its inhabitants developed during the 20th century. However, it has always been fragile, and something of a fraud, because it is extremely difficult to exert central control over tens of millions of inhabitants, despite George Orwell's nightmares. A key means of conditioning the masses was education, media, and advertising. These are all being impacted by the internet, and the internet is exposing government control as a fraud. There really is no wizard behind the curtain.
The logical outcome of these impacts of the internet is a further multiplication of the number of nation states, a general splintering of multi-ethnic societies, an increase in transnational affinity groups and organizations, and an increase in internecine conflict.
