This Internet blackout / anti-SOPA day is a reminder of how Third Turning innovations can so completely change the world. In the 3T, individuals are free to make a difference - not constrained by the consolidating forces active in the Fourth or First, not as pummeled by the uncertainty of the Second. To step back through 3Ts is to see radical innovation over and over...
1992 - Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web
1927 - Lindbergh's flight shows that intercontinental airplane travel will be a reality
1755 - Ben Franklin is able to prove that lightning IS electricity
1666 - Isaac Newton not only revolutionizes how we view the heavens but invents Calculus while he's at it.
~ 1450 - The Gutenberg Bible heralds mass media.
The commonalities between the Web and the printing press are already clear. (Sure, the Internet existed before the Web, but being able to"browse" fr site to site and automatically get pictures and then sounds and then animations and so on was what really changed it from a geek's realm to the property of the world.) The impact of the blackout is the way it can affect the political world directly. As the printing press and the ubiquity of the written Word made it possible for Martin Luther to overturn the established order 60 years later. This is a beginning - stay tuned.
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