Facbook, Google, Twitter

We will only achieve a grass roots rule by consensus when the networked communications are distributed, when they become peer to peer. At the moment companies like Facebook are steamrolling everybody into using them as the default hub for networked communications. And we know who they put first don’t we.

So, then, even if we managed to give likes of Facebook the flick, and everybody had their individual means of social networking, such as we do with email, we then still have to acknowledge that there are another set of big hierarchial players behind the whole internet, the telcos. And again, we know who they serve first.

The “networked revolution” only serves to provide the illusion that we are free to say and communicate what we want. Case point example is the person who was recently charged under the terrorism laws over his joke tweet that he’d like to blow the airport up for the flight delay / cancellation.

So the crowd all chime (tweet) in and repeat his tweet. Civil disobedience still did not save the guy’s bacon.

We are being lulled into a false sense of society, that we are all truly connected with our instant digital communications. But take a look on the street, on the Tube, on the bus, people are Matrix like absorbed in their digital world without any acknowledgement of their immediate physical proximity.

How many online petitions have you seen recently on Facebook and the like? The joke being, many of these are regarding foreign countries internal policies, pertaining to environment, resources or social justice. The citizens of these countries in question have a hard enough time having their own wishes felt, let alone the said governments giving two figs about the internet rent-a-crowd.

We are being conditioned to think that the mere click of a hyperlink will change the world. It will NOT. Unless it is backed up with real world action.

Recent media articles about the failure of the US, UK and their cohorts to make any headway in Afghanistan highlight the weakness of a reliance upon digital communication. The Taliban quickly figured out that it was suicide to communicate digitally or electronically as it could easily intercepted. Spy satellites and drone planes have great difficulty in intercepting word of mouth, written or carrier pigeon communication.

Digital (virtual) community is no replacement for real community.

The digital communication o