Protecting the 21st Century Bullhorn

Love or hate author Thomas Friedman and his views on globalization, to deny that our economies our cultures and our environment are all bound together for better or worse is folly. I happen to think he’s gotten more than a few things right in this regard and last week he had this to say about our little communications industry in particular:

“… globalization and the information technology revolution have gone to a whole new level. Thanks to cloud computing, robotics, 3G wireless connectivity, Skype, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, the iPad, and cheap Internet-enabled smartphones, the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected."

All true, but he may have committed a fallacy that scholars of argumentation theory haven’t quite named yet (as far as I know, being no scholar) and that is the fallacy of journalists who claim whatever they happen to be writing about at the time ought to be the top story. Freidman said about his idea above that “This is the single most important trend in the world today."

Wow. Fancy that.

The communications revolution is indeed a whopper, but the most important trend? I’d say ocean temperature is a pretty important trend. Famine, unrest and crime have their own disturbing trends. The downward slide of most of our 401(k)s is pretty important. The amount of weapons still being manufactured around the world that are designed to efficiently kill and maim human beings is a consistent and significant trend. Eliminating handwriting in elementary schools is even an alarming trend.

But by itself, the communications revolution is not the most important trend. Freidman eventually put the communications revolution in proper context by identifying the role global communications – particularly social media – has played in enabling other revolutionary events around the world: The Arab Spring, the Israeli Summer, the Tea Party, unrest in Athens and Barcelona and a flashmob mentality around the world.

But enabling is not creating. Communications technology does not inspire radical or revolutionary ideas; it doesn’t design a political movement or cause people to feel sufficiently wronged. It just greases the skids for turning these thoughts into action. And it makes them more efficient.

The revolutionary aspect of social media and other communications technology is that it belongs to the people to organize or share information around a movement whether it is political, musical or bowel (nothing about the new baby’s activities are off limits to social media!) without the threat of being encumbered.

Governments – at least ours, which protects the right of people to peaceably assemble – should not be empowered to shut these communications channels down or force the companies that run them to shut them down. Perhaps we should get to work on a Constitutional Amendment to head of such as problem should it occur — and we know it will. Just as there is a difference between peaceful protest, including civil disobedience, and rioting and looting, there is a difference between organizing protests or other legal action using social media and using it to coordinate a terror attack or some other criminal behavior. But the threat of one should not curtail the other.

Besides, the technology that enables all this marvelous communications can also be extended to pinpoint the location or dynamic address being used to cause problems and shut them down individually. Collectively, it should be hands off. As David Brin pointed out in his nonfiction book, “The Transparent Society," many lives were saved on Sept. 11, 2011, by the general population having access to their cell phones, including the lives on the ground saved by the brave people aboard Flight 93.

Law enforcement should enlist the help of the citizenry in emergency situations, not shut it out. Maybe then, the globalization and information technology revolutions can begin to become the most important trend in the world today — right after it solves that hunger thing and that ocean temperature problem and perhaps some of those other trends ahead of it on the list.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@vpico.com or click on the comment button below.