Technorealism, Alvin Toffler, and the Forgotten Third Wave
&gt;It was the intervention of Twitter and 4chan.<p>The author has lost the plot.<p>&gt;It&#x27;s pretty apparent that the reason Trump won wasn&#x27;t Russian intervention (note the extremely Second Wave nature of the explanation: nations playing at geopolitics).<p>Ah yes, a nation pouring an immense amount of resources into propaganda targeting a specific subsection of american society and having close contact with the currently elected administration definitely wasn&#x27;t the reason they got elected.<p>Let&#x27;s Correct the Record (don&#x27;t spritz all over your keyboard HN):<p>Russia abused Twitter&#x2F;Facebook. But Twitter and Facebook aren&#x27;t _the_ reason he got elected though. Facebook and the like are useful tools because you can post anything and have it reach a large, &quot;odd&quot;&#x2F;targeted audience. But without that audience, without that sounding board, the information is nothing. Facebook and Twitter, and all the other social media platforms have significant design flaws with their raison d&#x27;etre: the spread of information across some social graph.<p>Assuming that the social graph is comprised of rational actors is a question that keeps getting begged in these discussions. There is no evidence for this being the case and all the evidence against that assumption. So we should correct for it. Just like the existing media platforms do (well, with the exception of one notable media giant who loves abusing that fact who&#x27;s had a hand in creating the absurd situation we find ourselves in today).<p>We need to fix the problems we know about. That&#x27;s all. It wouldn&#x27;t hurt to remember why the media is structured the way it currently is (or was). In any system that gets re-implemented, there is always a duplication of efforts and lessons learned. These New Media systems will be no different.<p>The U.S. had a useful law for dealing with the problems of &quot;today.&quot; And it&#x27;s sad to say we&#x27;ve basically created problems where there never needed to be. Time to re implement the Fairness Doctrine -- across the board.<p>&gt;But the core of the &quot;brain-force economy&quot; is politically retarded - it has a low political IQ and has not achieved political self-consciousness. The old smokestack barons and trade union leaders who dominated during the second wave are still running rings around you guys in Washington.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s not so much as a new wave, but a new class of citizens who desperately need to become actively engaged in the political process. And understanding that the systems they&#x27;re creating has lead to new power structures and information conduits, and with power comes responsibility. A responsibility to ensure the consumers of their platform are not unduly influenced by incorrect, false, and misleading information (Facebook tried doing this but was lambasted by the right, can&#x27;t imagine why). A responsibility to support good governance and to support policies that provide a continued foundation for a functioning, healthy, productive, peaceful society.<p>The situation we&#x27;re in isn&#x27;t a technological problem. It&#x27;s a social one.