Kevin Kelly responds to Nick Carr

Nick Carr wrote:

In just the last few years, we've seen a series of traumatic political and economic events in the U.S. - unpopular wars, and an excruciating economic meltdown provoked in large measure by the greed of a small, extraordinarily privileged class of people - and yet despite these powerful triggers we've seen almost no sign of any mass protests. Our intensively networked college students have been as quiet as mice.

I think this an astute and important observation. If true, what does it mean if the crowd has moved away from the street?

Could be three answers:

1) Baudrillard's, that the virtual drives out the real, and because the virtual is impotent, we are in a very sad state of affairs.
2) Or it could be that street crowds were no more effective in their goals than virtual crowds, and it is replacing one impotent form with another. (Does marching change policies?)
3) Or it could be since the world has not ended despite the above mentioned failures that virtual crowds are more effective than street crowds, but they use chatting instead of protest to form the culture.

It would be great to have some data. In any case, I think Nick is right that activism has moved from the street to online -- and that makes it a different bird worthy of inspection.