The Web and its uses have been evolving rapidly during the past decade.

 

The widespread use of social media is now common, and is associated with the use of collaboration platforms, social networking applications and web services, personal publishing and search tools, blogs, wikis, video clips, podcasts and other forms of interlinked interactivity.  This phenomenon is having deep and widespread impact in key areas such as business, education, politics, news and entertainment.    

 

This interactive environment will be - forever more - the medium for most of our work, our play and wherein we will carry out a wide range of purposeful human activities.  It will be where and how we shape much of our culture and will touch all our activities on the local, regional, national, continental and global scale.

 

The Internet's interconnectivity enables horizontal and peer-to-peer based communications and interaction between people, whether they are friends, customers, colleagues, or citizens. This is not new (we've had the telephone and have briefly used other forms of electronic communication) but until now humans have not been able to interact quickly - in real-time or in asynchronous time, at their choosing - with any and all forms of digital data and services that enhance direct peer-to-peer communication.

 

Eventually, operating in networks will re-define business, education, politics, entertainment and other major areas of human activity.  


The technology to do this is now at hand ...


... but it's the anthropological, sociological and political effects on our existing forms of power and authority - our institutions - that will have the largest and longest-lasting impacts.

 

It's up to us ...


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In an increasingly interconnected world, a new organizing principle is emerging ...

 

"Wirearchy is a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on:

  • knowledge,
  • trust,
  • credibility, 
  • a focus on results

 enabled by interconnected people and technology"


(Jon Husband, 1999)