The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power







There are two principles of strategic planning:







5 responses to “The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power

  1. There is no connection between the internet and democracy. It’s a mirage experienced by people who stare too much at their screens. The internet is just a giant machine for making idiots. Has any country become democratic because of the internet? No. It just accelerates good and bad.

    And to become part of this idiot machine you have to spend thousands of dollars on equipment. This is what its advocates call ‘free culture’. Forget about feeding your family, what you need is a computer and your problems solved, right?

    What have have you gained with the Internet? You’ve put you powers of thought and memory and placed them onto another object. What then are you? Very little. The power of thought is reduced because your mind is not required to hold on to such memory. When iPhone-like devices are commonplace, when you are carrying the world’s knowledge in your pocket- what use is memory then? Or even a mind? As MLK said, “our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power, we have guided missiles and misguided men.”

    Your powers of thought and memory atrophy. Your automatic spellchecker reduces your ability to spell. How would you know who all your friends are without Facebook? Even your sense of direction shrinks as you rely on GPS systems.

    This is what technology’s advocates call ‘progress’.

    And where do your computers come from? The components from Congo. Six million dead from coltan mining so you can tell your friends on your coltan-powered mobile how coltan-powered laptops are going to spread democracy. Maybe you tell a Congolese civilian, forced at gunpoint to mine for coltan, that the widespread adoption of computers has had a wonderful democratising effect.

    Where are your computers built? From China, busy building its authoritarian government on your half-witted dreams. Not only is their no democracy in China, but you can’t even search for the word. Those who encourage the internet, and more computers for more people as a way of levelling the digital playing field, are responsible for industrial-scale mass murder, as well as boosting the fortunes of an undemocratic regime.

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