It’s hard to watch the news of the world—the uprisings in Tunis and Cairo—the rumblings of protest in Jordan and Yemen--and not feel that the winds of change are blowing.
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan famously sang half a century ago on the verge of an earlier era’s massive protests across the globe.
And today, you don’t need a newscaster to know what is important.
And that seems to be the message of our era.
We "broadcast ourselves," to paraphrase You Tube’s slogan; we post our own “status updates" (Facebook); and we write sources (wikipedia).
The way of life we live today seems to offer us “freedom” and a way to take charge of our lives.
But perhaps this has been a bit of a smokescreen.
We do more for ourselves. But we actually have less control.
So the winds of change have been blowing in another direction. Enter an organization like Wikileaks, whose goal is to push the envelope of the self-service doctrine to an extreme.
And meanwhile, people in countries where their leaders have oppressed them for decades are taking true control. For years, these people have been sold a bill of goods that asks them to believe that their rulers serve in their best interest....
You don't need a weatherman....
How the revolutions unfold is yet to be determined. But the seeds of such uprisings, from Cairo to Wikileaks, were planted many years ago.
And now we can watch them unfold ourselves.
We don't need a newscaster to tell us that we are witnessing history in the making.
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan famously sang half a century ago on the verge of an earlier era’s massive protests across the globe.
And today, you don’t need a newscaster to know what is important.
And that seems to be the message of our era.
We "broadcast ourselves," to paraphrase You Tube’s slogan; we post our own “status updates" (Facebook); and we write sources (wikipedia).
The way of life we live today seems to offer us “freedom” and a way to take charge of our lives.
But perhaps this has been a bit of a smokescreen.
We do more for ourselves. But we actually have less control.
So the winds of change have been blowing in another direction. Enter an organization like Wikileaks, whose goal is to push the envelope of the self-service doctrine to an extreme.
And meanwhile, people in countries where their leaders have oppressed them for decades are taking true control. For years, these people have been sold a bill of goods that asks them to believe that their rulers serve in their best interest....
You don't need a weatherman....
How the revolutions unfold is yet to be determined. But the seeds of such uprisings, from Cairo to Wikileaks, were planted many years ago.
And now we can watch them unfold ourselves.
We don't need a newscaster to tell us that we are witnessing history in the making.