God, Google and Globalization
"The key point is not just whether people hate us," says Robert Wright, the author of "Nonzero," a highly original book on the integrated world. "The key point is that it matters more now whether people hate us, and will keep mattering more, for technological reasons. I don't mean just homemade W.M.D.'s. I am talking about the way information technology — everyone using e-mail, Wi-Fi and Google — will make it much easier for small groups to rally like-minded people, crystallize diffuse hatreds and mobilize lethal force. And wait until the whole world goes broadband. Broadband — a much richer Internet service that brings video on demand to your PC — will revolutionize recruiting, because video is such an emotionally powerful medium. Ever seen one of Osama bin Laden's recruiting videos? They're very effective, and they'll reach their targeted audience much more efficiently via broadband."None of this means we, America, just have to do what the world wants, but we do have to take it seriously, and we do have to be good listeners. We, America, "have to work even harder to build bridges," argues Mr. Wright, because info-tech, left to its own devices, will make it so much easier for small groups to build their own little island kingdoms. And their island kingdoms, which may not seem important or potent now, will be able to touch us more, not less.
Friedman once again grasps what most don't. The "super empowered angry men" gathers more followers each day, and they all have different ideas about what is right and wrong.
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Haha. This is such a great example of Friedman fluff. He's recapitulating Wired Magazine pulp articles from ten years ago, but in a post-9/11 context. For shame, Grabes. For shame.
The fact that this gets dismissed as fluff is the shame. If you don't recognize the central role the Internet and various other high-tech communication technologies take in allowing something like al Queda to exist, then you don't understand 4th Generation Warfare or the battle we're trying to fight. It's all well and good to yell good and evil and insist the forces of light will prevail over the evil a-rabs, but if you bring a rock to a knife fight, you're going to get cut. Read the Lexus and the Olive Tree if you haven't yet. 'Wired magazine pulp' is what allows al Queda and friends to work the way they do. We ignore that at our peril.
I'll agree with Wozz, send Guano another sigh and say....
This is a great article but I think there is more here than was mentioned.
Are we all old enough here to remember cold war USSR and the seemingly cold pictures we got in black-n-white of life in Russia? Do we remember glasnos, when those pictures became color and we saw that those cold b&w people were people?
Technology, especially broadband has a way of bringing us all closer together, beyond making us all know that the X10 camera exists. It spreads pop culture and infuses it.
Fundamentalist culture, as a whole, thrives on isolationism from the rest of the world. Isolationism is what is seeks to protect.
The student at a university that is culture shocked by western ways may cling to a "destroy pop culture" message, but if it was already all over his house at home I think the effect would be lessened.
What I'm saying is that it hasn't happened yet, but eventually I expect information to lessen the gaps and ability groups to point at western evils. There will always be people to sign up, but the ever important popular support won't care anymore.
The information age homoginizes us all in a way that has never happened before in history.
Hey Grabes, you may want to get tech guru Garrison Friedman to check out luvewe.wookie,net, because you gotst some wack MX problems...
It's fixed now.