Amazon's capitulation to those opposed to their expansion in New York City is an epic moment for people power over an enormous corporate bully.
People traverse the dangerous journey to the US because of deep fear. They are often escaping brutality, even life-or-death situations.
The tools Facebook provides make discrimination easy. Facebook has monopoly profit margins, so it could easily provide real staffing to protect against discrimination, if it wanted to. It doesn’t want to.
The Internet doesn’t just enable cool avatars and the shorter form. It also allows the deeper form: cross-linked blog posts, extensive research, simultaneous screens and raw debate footage that anyone can scan online, at any time.
I think a lot of campaigns mis-learned the lessons of Obama 2008. They overly focused on the particular tools, and less so on the fact that the Internet enables a kind of culture of trust to be translated into real power.
When elections are not democratic, even the most populist discussions become superficial, disconnected from real power; they are theatre.
