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"We are in the midst of a technological upheaval; and financial rewards are flowing to the elites who create and control the new machines. Almost everybody else is threatened – including sophisticated bank executives at Citi and WellPoint’s healthcare analysts... Even if displaced workers do find jobs, will these jobs be dignified? A society divided between master-programmers and servants may not appeal to the servants, who will be the majority. But neo-Marxist visions of burger flippers on the barricades seem a touch too paranoid. In the 19th century, the shift from farm to factory was decried as dehumanising. But the supposedly alienated proletariat soon morphed into proud welders and machinists and today it is the decline of factories that is perceived as a problem. The lesson is that attitudes adjust and job status is elastic. There may be real unhappiness during the adjustment phase, but eventually the nannies of yesterday will be the respected childcare professionals of tomorrow. Cooks will turn into executive chefs. And so, in the last analysis, Watson’s most enduring impact will be to accentuate the trade-off between equity and growth"
In the skies above the city a drone flock drifts into formation broadcasting their local file sharing network. Part nomadic infrastructure and part robotic swarm they form a pirate internet, an aerial napster, darting between the buildings....
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Revolutionary communities are coalescing around social networks and text messages and occupy the city with the force to topple governments. The U.S. military’s has development autonomous aerial drones that they can be launched across a place like Egypt, when the government cut off internet access to prevent people from organizing protests. These drones would fly off and hover above the city, and create ad hoc connections and networks in a new form of nomadic territorial infrastructure.
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"Historically in any country and in any context it's young people who are at the core of protests," says Gopal. "But at this moment in history we're seeing a shared sense of deprivation among the young, a shared sense of there being a democracy deficit across the world. In all these places neoliberal economic policies have intensified their hold and affected young people most directly, young people looking for employment, study, prospects. I think it has cut young people to the bone, and they're confronting it directly."
Two other common motifs run through this year's rebellions. First has been the collapse in authority of traditional institutions; from Mubarak's cult of personality to the seemingly incessant scandals engulfing Britain's arbiters of political, financial and cultural control – bankers, MPs, and the Murdoch media empire. The crumpling is contagious, fuelling rebellions in the most of places.
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The second commonality has been the tools used to mobilise dissent. Although the role of online social media in the Arab uprisings has often been overstated, there can be no doubt that platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have enabled diverse groups to quickly garner broad support for acts of resistance – and that this means of communication has coloured the internal organisation of protest movements.
Cyber-utopians who believe the Arab spring has been driven by social networks ignore the real-world activism underpinning them
the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern
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Gene Sharp is no Che Guevara but he may have had more influence than any other political theorist of his generation.
His central message is that the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern - and that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble.
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Sharp provides in his books a list of 198 "non-violent weapons", ranging from the use of colours and symbols to mock funerals and boycotts.
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