We are witnessing a radical transformation in society.
the end of privacy and the rise of the Global Village. And the revolution is over. Hierarchy as an organizing principle lost.
What fired my synapses was this article, on the 'uniqueness' of Mayor Booker's use of 'social media.'
http://www.addictinginfo.org/...
That's not news. That's how your kids organize their lives - and yours.
Continued beneath the orange organizational chart.....
Anarchy is the opposite of hierarchy. (def.)
Hierarchy is information filtered vertically, anarchy is telepathy. (me)
Hierarchical organizational models are based on the need to communicate to achieve the goals of those at the apex of the pyramid.
Acceptance of the authority of those on the top is usually predicated on the ability of the Alpha population to provide or deny safety/security/gratification to un-capitalized populations. (Money is power.)
Hierarchies are a means of transmitting information to accomplish tasks. The military is a example. Generals have information unavailable to rank and file. Troops are trained to respond in a fashion communicated to them through intense training.
Hierarchies are dependent on the lack of telepathy,which is s the supposed transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction. (wiki) The more limited the means of information transfer, the more vertical the organizational model. Kings, Popes and Cartels. All dependent on proprietorial wisdom. Secret knowledge....
One ring to rule them all. Knowledge is power.
That is the real objection to cell phone support from the Federal government.
Smartphones have made that model culturally impossible. They are also the end of the m odern cultural construct of privacy, which shares the hierarchical characteristic of a need for secret knowledge.
Most American children have access to some form of internet/smartphone. That number will grow. These kids been doing art despite attempts to have them grow up without ever creating something. Artists are little gods. They shape things into emotions.
A world where everyone in the universe is free to comment, debate, fight and be heard. The rest of the planet is there, instantly and without filters.
They know they control how the world sees them. They assume everyone else does, too. They see what the sender chose to post. So the individual is judged by their personal choices of content. Not their corporal endowments.
This is important because avatars stake out personal attributes before physical ones can trigger learned prejudices. Genetic manifestations are no longer a barrier for the individual. You are what you choose to post.
Today's American children have very little secret past. They have been under surveillance since the moment of their birth. They can upload videos of their heads pushing through Mom's cervix onto UTube. And have. Everything they do is under the lens of a camera. What seems like sexting to older people is merely a continuation of the acceptance of a life spent under public gaze. (Pedophilia is not peer communication - it's just perversion.)
If you can broadcast to the world anything you choose on a whim, that is anarchy and telepathy. We have raised a generation who assume the rest of the universe is available on demand.
So I pose the question: What happens when the majority of the world is connected by mechanical telepathy?
Because any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Heinlein