If you want an illustration of the fruitlessness, and indeed illusion, of control from the centre, just follow what happens with the whole wikileaks witch hunt as it plays out.
Some of the traditional corporations, legislatures and judiciaries (and more corporate dependent denizens of the web) have rapidly folded to demands from the centre (the US and other Western governments) as that centre lashes out against wikileaks sharing information the centre feels the rest of us have no right to.
I'm not here to argue the rights or wrongs of that, by the way, many others follow the intricacies more closely and are better able to comment on that than I.
What I do know is that when Mastercard, Paypal and even Amazon pull the plug on wikileaks you know it is because they have come under pressure from the centre. And that's hard to resist when you rely on the corporate norm for your paycheck.
Tonight the ante was raised as Twitter started suspending accounts and - remarkably - removed wikileaks from the trending topics.
Suddenly those for freedom feel even the open web and its uberlords are cowtowing.
Panic not. And don't blame Twitter, Facebook or any other pressured party.
I'm pretty damn sure the guys at Twitter et al are wise enough to the self organising nature of the internet to know that a blockage here and a restriction there is soon worked around. Intelligent networks have ways of reforming.
The internet was developed to survive nuclear war. I'm sure it'll survive the best efforts of even the most zealous of politicians.
Central control is not an option. Never was.
So if the guys at Twitter or elsewhere throw the hapless politicos a sop here and there - don't blame them. They'll be doing it with fingers crossed behind their back and in the full knowledge that it'll make little difference in the very near term - that the network will reorganise and self-organise around whatever restrictions it faces.
Showing posts with label Networks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Networks. Show all posts
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Monday, November 17, 2008
The Power of the Network's growing network...
The new version's chapters are as follows:
1. The Death of Death
2. Don't Just Witness the Network (adapting to survive)
3. How to Go Viral
4. Communities of Purpose
5. Advertising & Marketing in the 21st Century
6. We're All Publisher's Now - The user is the destination
7. It's Not How Famous You Are - It's How Relevant
8. Digital Identity and the Long Tail
9. Why Media is the New Business Ecology
10. We Are the Eighth Mass Media
11. Hail To the Chief Node
12. How We Are Made Great

Review copies are either in the hands of or on the way to the following. If you 'd like to join the list, just drop me an email with details of your blog and your postal address.
If you've read, reviewed it, shared it or would just like to be included in the following list please let me know via comments or email. Thanks
The Power of the Network's Network (so far).
- Stowe Boyd
- Alan Moore
- Clay Shirky
- Neville Hobson
- Anjali Ramachandran
- Jonathan Macdonald
- Dan Thornton
- Gerd Leonhard
- Peggy Anne Salz
- Luke Razzell
- Mark Earls
- David Armnano
- Eaon Pritchard
- Paula White
- Michael Leis
- Alistair Crane
- Steven Ming Yeow
- Angela Wilson
- Roger Kondrat
- Neil Perkin
- Richard Marshall
- Matt Alder
- C Enrique Ortiz
- You?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
FasterFuture.blogspot.com
The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?

![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=99835c4b-7e4f-422b-bdee-72e40d512791)