The Internet of people

Jeff Jarvis from Davos

"And so they don’t yet see that the internet will shift power even more than they realize.
And it’s certainly true that the internet enables each of us to find the information that matters to us, to publish what we think, and do what we want.
The internet is more about collective action. It is about connections.
In media terms, I said at Davos and here on the blog that we have seen a small-scale version of this progression:
1. First, big media let us interact with them, about their stuff.
2. Then big media beg us to give them our stuff.
3. Now we realize that our stuff is ours — not user-generated content for the big guys — and we expect them to come to us.

It means that all our stuff makes up the corpus of media, that we have the means of creation (bless my Mac and WordPress), marketing (that is, linking), and now distribution (thank you, YouTube).
Now we can form our own coalitions to reach the critical mass still needed to be heard and to act.

Critical mass will rise and a just society — the kind of society we all want — will not allow the tyranny of a minority or, in the case of a dictator, the minority of one. Society is balance and the internet is a new balancer."

I do not quite believe it.
I would say:
Critical mass could rise...



"So we see a similar path as in media:
1. The powerful realize they have no choice but to let you speak (even in China and the Middle East).
2. The powerful are forced to listen.
3. The powerful will realize that this isn’t just about mutual discussion but mutual decision.

I believe, the future is not about establishing social networks as walled playgrounds but instead realizing that the internet is the social network.
If they really thought they were about to be overthrown by bloggers, would they sound quite so cheerful about it?
This is the best indication that they don’t yet comprehend the impact of the internet — they don’t, as we say, get it.
So let them think that interactivity and social networks are ways for us to amuse ourselves while they still wield the power. They will wake up one day and realize they no longer own the world and can no longer look down at it from the top of the mountain,that the job of media — and, for that matter, government, business, and technology — is to bring people together to find distributed and elegant solutions to their problems. That is not web 3.0. That’s society 2.1. And we’ve only just begun. "

Well I think many of them have already understood the Internet lesson.
Many have become bloggers themselves.
Many are using the Internet as a new way to reach an audience.
And many are actually quite succesful (see Beppe Grillo in Italy)

The simple reason is not in the fact that the Intenet is about individualism or communication.
The simple reason is that the people (mostly young people and among them I include us, members of the "boom generation") spend many hours a day on the Internet.
And the Market follows the people, doesn't it?