From Unknown To President In Four Years

It had been a long time since I watched Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, but I ran across it this morning.

Here it is:



About four and a half years later he's president. That's quite a leap. And it was largely made possible by modern communications technology in the hands of people who knew how to use it effectively.

So here's the question: What will happen in coming years as increasingly powerful communications technology becomes available at an accelerating rate? Perhaps these leaps will get shorter and shorter. The long-term effects of that are difficult to guess, but it is clear that effectively organizing large numbers of people over short periods of time is getting easier. This ought to enable political changes that would have barely been imaginable--let alone possible--just a few years ago.