Sometimes a new trend can be forgotten, even rejected by its advocates, due to the immense resistance to it coming from those in power.
Such is the case with transparency. Despite the jailing of journalists and bloggers, despite the murders of journalists in the Mideast, despite the Great Chinese Firewall, this decade will likely be known as The Decade of Transparency.
Secrets just can’t hide. (Like the one the fellow on the right was trying to peddle about not knowing the guy on the left, whose picture was photo-shopped next to him by a Web site.)
We know far more about the run-up to the Iraq War than our fathers did about Vietnam in 1966. They in turn knew far more about Vietnam then, thanks to TV, than their parents did about the run-up to the Great Depression in the early 1930s. They in turn knew more about what was going on, thanks to radio, than their parents knew about the 1890s. And so on.
Of course, the medium of our time, what makes all this possible, is the Internet. Once one person gets something out, and assuming it is valid, it is repeated, and passed along. Not only that, but others seek out the same or supporting facts where they are.
The conservative movement spent decades building this kind of capability (liberals call it the Vast Right Wing Noise Machine) yet bloggers have managed to copy its impact in just a few years. This is important to know.
The same sort of thing is happening in the world I cover for a living, software. The open source movement has replicated most of the features of proprietary programs in a very short time, and they move ahead far more quickly than the proprietary behemoths can, because of transparency. You can see the code.
Thus we can make a direct connection between the worlds of business and technology on the one hand, and the worlds of journalism and politics on the other.
Every other political crisis in American history was marked by a similar technological shift:
- Books and newspapers in the 1850s. That’s how we learned about slavery.
- Mass-market penny newspapers in the 1890s. That’s how we learned about unions.
- Radio in the 1930s. That’s how we learned about the Depression.
- Television in the 1960s. That’s where we saw Vietnam.
Each medium had its own vocabulary, which became the dominant political vocabulary of the succeeding generation.
This is how it works, every time. A new, more aggressive medium breaks down the existing information
power structure, through which change (and the demand for change) comes
rushing forward. (Record executive turned blogger Howie Klein, picture by Owen Egan.)
It’s also important to note that each of these media in turn became the primary
resistance to the next crisis. The same media power centers behind the 1850s abolition movement were the ossified establishment by
the 1890s. The same was true for mass market newspapers in the 1930s,
radio by the 1960s, and television news in our own time.
This is partly coincidental. The fact is that new ideas, and new ways
of thinking, seek out new methods of expression as every crisis occurs,
and they find them. As a political Myth matures, this new media pecking
order becomes the establishment, which is the resistance to the next
generation’s change.
So it should be no surprise at all that CNN, MSNBC, and Fox resist the
kind of reporting we see on the Internet, even lampooning it in favor
of "all nonsense, all the time" coverage. They came to power in the
last crisis, and they are now the primary force of resistance to the
new power of the Internet to get the new stories out.
Also notice the trend. We move over time to greater transparency, with
each generation. But we move away from it, toward trivial pursuits, as
each new generational myth moves on.
This is the most remarkable story of our time, the one you’re reading right now, the one you’re a part of. It makes journalism cheap and easy to do. It makes politics cheap and easy to do. As in the example below:
