I was editing a list of reasons why it is worthwhile to develop an ecological view of innovation. And one of the reasons is that without this type of input any analysis/argument regarding the modern state (of things) is soft.
A perfect example is the middle east. Not until now that the Web 2.0 marketing machine has began taking credit for the various uprisings in the region had I ever heard any discussion about technology's impact on that situation. Yet phrases like facebook revolution overlook the fact that there is a huge population of young (under 30), disenfranchised (no jobs, and no political voice) males in the region. Historically this is the reason for the type of uprisings currently in the news. There is almost a 100% certainty that these uprisings were going to happen even without a twitter-esque communication system.
But what is even more fascinating is the lack of acknowledgement that technology has actually been critical to the developments in the middle east over the past fifty years.
Not even Wired has carried an article on the technical requirements that make it possible for a renegade cleric to wreak global mayhem from a cave in one of the most desolate regions of the world. There's been an unstated assumption that this has always been possible. Yet it's only within the past twenty years that it has been technologically possible for a character like Bin Laden to exist. Before that al-Qaeda would've needed to be more a centralized urban organization - the type of organization the western military and espionage complexes are used to dealing with.
The rise of global terrorism at the advent of globalized communication systems is not a coincidence.
