Let me say first off that I tend toward short range pessimism and have a bizarre penchant for long-range optimism despite all good evidence to remain skeptical.
It seems to me that since the internet, especially since 9/11 and even more especially since 2006, there has been a growing awareness of the "deep state" dimension. It is difficult to access this with any accuracy because our "social self-image" is still reflected to us by the distorted mirror of corporate media.
Earlier to day I was reading this rather long essay concerning the plight of newspapers and journalism in a post-internet world:
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/Print media does much of society’s heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case. This coverage creates benefits even for people who aren’t newspaper readers, because the work of print journalists is used by everyone from politicians to district attorneys to talk radio hosts to bloggers. The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?
I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.
Imagine, in 1996, asking some net-savvy soul to expound on the potential of craigslist, then a year old and not yet incorporated. The answer you’d almost certainly have gotten would be extrapolation: “Mailing lists can be powerful tools”, “Social effects are intertwining with digital networks”, blah blah blah. What no one would have told you, could have told you, was what actually happened: craiglist became a critical piece of infrastructure. Not the idea of craigslist, or the business model, or even the software driving it. Craigslist itself spread to cover hundreds of cities and has become a part of public consciousness about what is now possible. Experiments are only revealed in retrospect to be turning points.
In craigslist’s gradual shift from ‘interesting if minor’ to ‘essential and transformative’, there is one possible answer to the question “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” The answer is: Nothing will work, but everything might. Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.
The point the author is making is that we are in a period of revolutionary transition. This author is discussing something very specific, how print media changed the landscape of civilization after 1500. Most everything we know and accept as "civilization" in the West has its roots in the Renaissance. My appraisal is that what we are beginning to pass through now is another "revolutionary moment" that may transform everything in its path. Clearly there are those who have incredible vested interest in managing this "revolution" to insure their continued economic and political hegemony -- thus the continued rise of the technological police state which currently justifies its existence behind the very real threat of terrorism. As we begin to understand that this threat
primarily emanates from within the "deep state" itself, this changes our whole perception of and relationship to this threat. Currently the so called "war on terror" is a domestic and international social management system. But as the author of the above is attempting to indicate, during times of genuine revolution, the actual outcomes of even apparently innocuous technology deployments can not be clearly foreseen. What happens, for example, as the previous methodologies for hierarchical social control (mass media) are increasingly replaced by peer-to-peer information streams?
This brings up a lot of interesting questions. I think DU can be seen as an interesting example. On one hand it is an information stream where many people here share a particular political perspective -- a dynamic perspective that is changing as we go forward. Within it we see there are many who, although they may not yet fully embrace the "deep state" paradigm, nevertheless, through observation, are coming to see that it is a "more accurate map" of the political landscape than can be had through traditional journalistic means. On one hand there is an attempt to keep all this within the boundaries of "politics as usual" and yet increasingly it is becoming clear to many that "shoe" no longer fits. The search for new shoes begins.
Ultimately I think the question is going to come down to
value and
how value is "monetized" in the market place. Currently that monetization is under the control of a banking system that has its roots in a "media revolution" (printing, printing, printing) already 500 years in our historical rear view mirror. I believe that is why the current stage we are passing through is so challenging: We're on the cusp of a completely new social paradigm that may, ultimately, make the post Renaissance era seem as "antiquated" to us as the previous, "Gothic" era did after about 1700.
There is a power struggle going on with the wealthiest class consolidating its assets and power in an attempt to sustain a hierarchical system which, on one hand, seems feasible given technological developments but which, in point of fact, may miss the "revolutionizing" consequences of the very technology employed to implement it. Perhaps it is a kind of race to see which aspects of human consciousness can best exploit the possibilities of this technology. Will we end up in a global system of perpetual fear controlled by an increasingly paranoid wealthy elite who view "the rest of us" as the barbarians at the gates -- or will ingenuity, creativity, insight and the indelible human spirit transform its use into a kind of anarchy that renders their hierarchical paranoia irrelevant?
If the Constitution can not be employed to guarantee the rule of law and protect our inalienable rights, then I argue it has already become irrelevant. Most people don't know it yet but if I'm right this will become increasingly obvious as we proceed.
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