Robert Wright, author of Nonzero, writes in the LA Times. The revolution of grass-roots digital empowerment will change the nature of war and the place of war in American foreign policy. Some people who see the Abu Ghraib scandal as technologically driven are suggesting technological reforms. At one level, Rumsfeld grasps the power of digital technology. It was because our troops were digitally empowered that we needed so few of them. But this cuts both ways. Once you figure technology into both sides of the ledger, war looks different. [ I continue to like Wright's way of thinking... he gives depth and structure to concepts I merely felt intuitively or thought about at a low level. I can't read this entire article because it's a reg-only site and google can't get me a cached version, but from the excerpt alone, I feel confident in agreeing with it, at least in sum. I think we'll see a soft revolution in the way people engage government and politics. Multi-tiered topical forums will grow in relevance, and the populace will convey it's wishes in vast electronic versions of congress or parliament. Representation can become more direct. Of course, all this assumes the infrastructure can be built in a fault-tolerant way... one which minimizes the ability of any one group or faction to take over the network surrepeticiously. Still, I think it can come, assuming we don't run out of energy first. -k] Creating a New Picture of War, Pixel by Pixel | 
