Game Changer?

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”….. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

Although, I am not fan of fictions, particularly Science fictions but I couldn’t resist reading Isaac Asimov’s a few works sporadically, both out of curiosity and also because it was introduced to me by my uncle who was always an inspiration for me. In an interview (1988), Isaac Asimov had predicted that, internet will change levels of learning; Public education was a change from personal tutors for those who could afford to class based lectures, in which the students were expected to learn with an equal pace. The internet will not only allow each individual to learn with his/her own pace and timing but more importantly, it makes learning, a lifelong process. Asimov was not alone in speculating, how internet will change things as these speculations are still continued. After a decade of “worldwide” internet availability, we must be able to see some of the most evident changes and test some of the speculations. Here, I would like to link the fate of the three most popular, internet based movements.

 If eusociality have allowed humans to conquer the earth, it has also been a source of debates, conflicts and perpetual struggle between individuals and society, each side trying to increase the spheres of their influences.  By introduction of internet, this relationship disturbed as never before, as it has empowered both governments and individuals. Iranian green movement, Arab Spring, London riots and 99% movements came as a test of the levels of empowerments and to redefine relationships. Although, all these movements had the same characteristics like, absence of central leadership, no ideological basis and no clear lists of demands but the results were very different. While Iranian green movement, London riots and 99% movements could not survive, the Arab Spring evolved with mixed results. The Iranian, British, American governments were proved to have evolved with technology and were organized enough to easily deal with their respective popular movements so nothing happened. Arab governments that had not reorganized themselves collapsed in the face of popular uprising.

Aside from higher intelligence, higher culture and language, what makes humans unique from the rest of social organisms is that; all normal individuals can reproduce, make and shift alliances across all social levels and this flexibility is one of the main reasons for increasing sophistication of human individuals, society, culture and intelligence as a whole. Using imaginations to use past experiences and creating future scenarios to evaluate the consequences of their decisions is uniquely human and main cause of human’s deep interests in others and in socializations. This is why, Asimov could predict that by invention and spread of internet (socialization of computers; a human technology), individuals’ will gain a control over their learning; to learn at their own pace and timing and topic of choice.

After a decade of entering into this new level of socialization, at least one thing has become even clearer; in relationships of individuals with society and within groups, adaptability and organization are still the yin and yang of triumphs. The perceptions that internet has changed the old game of central leadership and ideologue have proved to be wrong as still, it is the central leadership and a common ideology that organize people. 

Although, I am myself, doesn't like central leadership and ideology as they both retard people in following them but, it is a fact that, the bigger and more efficient an organization is, the easier, it controls over individuals and smaller groups and organizations. For this we even don't need to think much as Empires of the past, powers and multi-national companies of our times are all standing evidences. It may not be wrong to say that, although, human societies are unique in flexibility of social mobility but the function of society as a whole is no more different than the colonies of other eusocial organisms.