Facebook, WikiLeaks and reality TV display an anti-establishment mood that has implications for politics, writes ELAINE BYRNE
‘THERE IS an erosion of trust in authority, a decentralizing of power and at the same time, perhaps, a greater faith in one another. Our sense of identity is more variable, while our sense of privacy is expanding.”
So wrote Richard Stengel, managing editor of Timemagazine, in his editorial announcing Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as his publication's 2010 Person of the Year. The 26-year-old Harvard dropout "has wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network," according to Stengel, "thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the US".
Zuckerberg is representative of a global generation which is fundamentally redefining conventional values towards power. “I’m trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share,” is the idealistic mission statement on Zuckerberg’s Facebook page.
With over 500 million users, Facebook has created a new system of exchanging information and has provided an alternative means of social interaction. According to Aaron Sorkin's movie The Social Network, the genesis of Facebook originated in Zuckerberg's frustration at being unable to join Harvard's elite social clubs because his social background was not wealthy or prestigious enough.
WikiLeaks's Julian Assange and the right-wing US populist Tea Party movement were ranked by Timeas runners-up. Although they make unlikely bedfellows, all three share an embedded aversion to traditional authority and have bluntly turned the establishment on its head.
Assange has imposed transparency on to the world’s only super power with the release of diplomatic cables that the whistleblower group says will eventually number 251,287 documents. Veils of secrecy are being stripped away as the simple principle of transparency has confronted the modus operandi of highly secretive elitists and redistributed information back into the hands of the citizens.
WikiLeaks and Facebook are at the vanguard of exploiting the internet’s power to collect and distribute private information. The boundaries of public and private, of openness and secrecy, will never again be the same. For some, these innovations are merely a technological assault on privacy. For others, they have created an equality of information access while at the same time dismissing influential gatekeepers who controlled the agenda.
This is the antithesis of traditional notions of authority which rest on absolute obedience, unwavering loyalty and deference to centralised hierarchical structures. Chapter 19 of the Murphy report has shown the consequences of this type of power, characterised by impunity and silence.
We now live in an age where a crisis of political legitimacy, real or imagined, has created demand for greater citizenship participation. Zuckerberg and Assange no doubt regard their actions as an expression of engaged and assertive citizenship which embraces direct action and elite-challenging activities.
This is not the preserve of the left, as the incredible success of the Tea Party movement has demonstrated. Underneath the veneer of conservatism, the grass-roots uprising was characterised by populism, anti-elitism and suspicion of government. The Tea Party movement has no central leadership. Instead it adopted the same technological tools that helped to elect Barack Obama.
Time's top three "people" of the year suggests that the threads of how we interact have changed utterly. Our priorities now stress self actualisation and autonomy. The political consequences of this are increased fragmentation and volatility.
The Rubberbandits have not yet received the accolades of international magazines but the essence of their anti-authority message is the same. The Limerick hip-hop group have now collected almost four million YouTube hits with Horse Outside.
Its popularity is probably not down to their frank guide on how to successfully pick up women – “I don’t need insurance, I don’t need no parking space, and if you try to clamp my horse, he’ll kick you in the face” – but rather it is a two-fingered salute, coloured with forceful expletives, to life generally.
This may also explain the popularity of Ann Widdecombe on recent episodes of BBC television's Strictly Come Dancing.Dressed in bling and sparkling sequins, the ultra conservative former Tory MP became a popular phenomenon as the public voted week in and week out to reject the formal opinion of the judges. The public were not so much voting for her as against the official assessment.
Such condemnation by reality television judges has proven to be an asset for many contestants. Formal endorsement by establishment figures can now be an obstacle for success. This anti-establishment streak has created unlikely heroes out of X-Factor's Brazilian crooner Wagner Carrilho, our own Jedward and even Panos Zambetakis from the TV3 version of The Apprentice.
As we enter into the second decade of the 21st century, the challenge is to embrace the confrontation with authority, however defined, and welcome the tearing down of those traditional pillars that have held our institutional life together for far too long.
Facebook, WikiLeaks, the Tea Party movement, the Rubberbandits and reality television may not seem to be likely revolutionaries, but without us knowing it, our attitudes and mindset towards authority have undergone a radical transformation from the comfort of our armchairs.