Shifting power in the Information Age

Over my next four or five "Trippi’s Take" Columns, I want to explain why I think "The Information Age" is the wrong way to think about where we are as a society today. I think we are at the beginning stages of an "Age of Empowerment," and I'll be writing about what I think that means as we move forward.

We live in a top-down society. All of our institutions are top down: corporations, governments, political parties. And in a top-down world, information is power. People within these institutions tend to hold on to or use information to move up the ladder of government, their political party, or the corporation/business they work for.

But if information is power, and if technology, the Internet, and fragmented media channels are spreading information faster and penetrating more homes and nations than ever before, then it is not information that is being distributed— it is power being distributed.

For the first time in a long time, power is being distributed to the bottom. In a top-down world, power being distributed to the bottom is a very disruptive thing that brings with it waves of change.

Among the first signs of this Age of Empowerment in the United States was Napster. Napster became a platform (legal or not) for millions to combine their power and use the Internet to wreak havoc on a top-down recording industry.  The result?  The way music is distributed has been changed forever.

In South Korea, cell phones, text messaging, and the web based “Ohmynews” were credited for the citizen’s grassroots movement that elected new leadership from the “outside.”

The Dean for America campaign was many things, but at its heart, it was the bottom combining power to wreak havoc on a top-down political system addicted to big money contributions from both sides of the political aisle. 

Mainstream media is not immune to the sea change caused by bottom-up empowerment.  Conservatives on the Internet, using their newfound power to challenge and question the top, pulled Dan Rather and the four producers at CBS’s 60 Minutes program from their top of the rung perches.

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