The Scoop - The Future of the Web. Hyperdemocracy. For the past three hundred years, the relationship between the press and the state has been straightforward: the press tries to publish, the state uses its various mechanisms to thwart those efforts.
This has produced a cat-and-mouse steady-state, a balance where selection pressures kept the press tamed and the state – in many circumstances – somewhat accountable to the governed. There are, as always, exceptions. In the last few months, the press has become hyperconnected, using that hyperconnectivity to pierce the veil of secrecy which surrounds the state; using the means available to it to hyperdistribute those secrets.
The press has become hyperempowered, an actor unlike anything ever experienced before. Wikileaks is the press, but not the press as we have known it. Hyperdemocracy. Mpesce.