tangled webs of the brave new world

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen – And keep your eyes wide the chance won’t come again – And don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin – And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’ – For the loser now will be later to win – For the times they are a-changin‘

For the past three days I’ve had that friggin’ song in my head.  And most definitely, it has been Bob Dylan’s version of the song.  It’s so stuck I often find myself walking down the street singing it fairly loudly, and upon recognizing that, I find myself wanting to burst on out into it… all theatrical and shit.

I love being a citizen of Now.  Observing these structurally shaking instances of history.

Citizens of Iran, speaking out against their theocracy.  The Women of Iran, finding their voices.  The Net Generation of Iran, fighting violence with information-communication technologies.  Amazing.  I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the results of this one.  Unfortunately our attention spans here in the West are so short, especially the media’s attention span.  Also unfortunately democracy always comes bundled with bureaucracy and it is possible that the institution has far more power to drag the recount process out.  I suspect the Iran saga will be anti-climatic.  They will do the recount, and the numbers won’t change.  What then?  The citizens will have to accept it.  Just as US citizens did in their 2000 election … and in the end, they didn’t even get their recount.  The Supreme Court decided… much like the Supreme Overlord will.

Unless, of course, the recount happens and the numbers do change… what will happen then?  I have no idea.

I am ultimately convinced that if Obama had not won in November, we would have seen a similar uprising in the US.  I know it is a highly theoretical thing to say, but I stand by it.  What’s happening in Iran is a smackdown of cultures.  What happened in the 2008 election was also a smackdown of cultures.  If John McCain won in a landslide, or even by a narrow margin, there would have been protests and allegations of voter fraud en masse.  In 2008, the outrage would have expanded past an audience of election wonking observers like it did in 2000 and 2004.  You would have seen these scenes from Tehran in Washington.

God I’m happy that didn’t happen.  I am increasingly impressed with Barack on a daily basis.  He is governing exactly how I hoped he would.  And, he is still using all those social media tools that got him elected to reach out to his constituents.

Though, when I read about a City in Montana that requires you submit all of you Web 2.0 logins and passwords, I think… WTF America?  Background check takes on a whole new meaning when you have to start opening up your cyberlife to your employers.  That is the depth approach to job screening.

Then I start thinking about the Bill just introduced in Canadian Parliament about intercepting Internet transmissions and gathering user information from ISPs and I think WTF Canada?   “Twenty-first century technology calls for 21st-century tools,” said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson (via CBC).  Indeed they do Minister Nicholson.

The Internet is blowing it all up.  Thrusting us into a brave new world whether we want to go or not.  We early adopters are all quite giddy about it.  Once labelled the “cyber-utopianists” it is clear the skeptics are now paying attention.  And jumping on board where they can.  The revolution could never be televised because it must be an interactive, reflexive process for it to be real.

But, now that the Internets’ transformative potential is very clear, it becomes scary.  Because Now, it is no longer theory… and you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be people trying to make their top dollars by attempting to exploit the technology for profit, for security, and for measuring an individual’s moral value by snooping around their Web 2.0 pages.

Now is, indeed an interesting and exciting time.

The line it is drawn the curse it is cast – The slow one now will later be fast – As the present now will later be past – The order is rapidly fadin’ – And the first one now will later be last – For the times they are a-changin’