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Your Obedient Serpent
athelind
21 February 2011 @ 09:44 am
The Revolution is being DIGITZED.  
One of the tags in my list is "The Revolution Will Be DIGITIZED". It's a play, of course, on the title of the song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. I first used the phrase as the title of a PoliSci paper I wrote around '92 or '93, concerning the role of new communications technologies in the fall of the Soviet Union and the sociopolitical implications of the then-emerging internet.

I've used the tag for a variety of reasons since I introduced it a couple of years ago, some overtly political and some ... less than revolutionary. Yesterday's Writer's Block post was the first time I really felt that I was using it in the sense I originally intended, back when I first wrote that paper.

Yes. The Internet, the cell phone, GPS/GIS, desktop publishing and 3D printing ... this is world-changing technology. It has changed the world. If you're reading this, it has changed your everyday life, the things that you consider "normal" and "routine".

And it is poised to change it even more. It's facilitating real revolution, producing "regime change" more deep-seated than invasion, occupation, and installation of "reliable" puppets ever could.

Mightier than the sword indeed, my friends.

Cross-posted to unitarian_jihad.
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SilverClawbfdragon on February 21st, 2011 09:52 pm (UTC)
It's interesting that two of those 5 things came directly from the seeds of the DOD, and two others indirectly benefited greatly from the seeds planted by DOD projects (much of the radio communication technology that went into cell phones, much of the talent that had been working at Xeorx PARC).

Nono, this isn't to say that the Military Industrial Complex needs more money. Rather, I think it's a sign that government sponsored science and engineering is doing a lot more for us then people think perhaps. These technologies that are some of the corner stones of employment in the US right now owe a great deal to the money that came from the taxes that ran the government all those years.
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one in a billionsiege on February 22nd, 2011 06:23 pm (UTC)
It's a question of who reminds the soldiers of their duty: the People are the highest authority in the Constitution, even if most civilians can't give them orders; but someone will argue to shoot because you're told because somehow the People are contravening the Constitution by petitioning for redress of grievances.
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