London Bridges

Terrorists are cowardly vermin, lower than a pus-filled wart on a roach's filthy butt. However, today's evil cowardice has shown a new side of technology, one that espouses a fundamental change in our form of communicating.

Within minutes of the first bomb in the London subway, pictures and video from camera-phones were being uploaded onto the Internet. Text and voice messages were flashing around the world alerting people about the events, the danger and the fact that the sender and even some of the people around him or her were safe, or at least, only mildly injured.

Less than an hour after the first bomb went off, CNN was showing brief footage taken on a camera-phone--footage downloaded from the Internet. Blogs were flashing news and updates almost every second, almost all of it created and distributed by people who are not journalists. For the first time in this media-saturated age, the Internet was clearly at the forefront of a major global--unexpected--event, almost as if the entire planet had rushed to the scene as spectators.

Three very fundamental themes have been exposed in this tragic attack:

1) News reporting, once controlled by "professionals" and "networks," is now a second-level source of immediate information, unable to compete with the ubiquity of widespread technology.

2) Technology has given the citizen the power of the Fourth Estate, the power to be the freest press ever. But, as any Marvel Comics fan can recite in his sleep, with great power comes great responsibility. Who will teach the masses what that responsibility is and means before it degenerates into vitriolic cacophony?

3) The purpose of terrorism is to disrupt, weaken and ultimately wrench apart the society it targets. Although technology can foment a tendency to isolate, that same technology creates bridges of unity that can spring into being within seconds. The fabric of a society--of societies as a whole--are thus strengthened, not weakened, when events such as those in New York, Madrid and now London are unleashed.

The implications of technology, what The Jenius calls "the sociodigital horizon," are a crucial realm of study for global economic players. Changing today is not as powerful--or as profitable--as changing tomorrow.

The Jenius Has Spoken.