The Web Rewires the Movement by Andrew Boyd
The Battle in Seattle brought to the world's attention a new global resistance movement that was not only made possible by the Internet but, as Naomi Klein has deftly pointed out, was shaped in its image. Sharing the Internet's architecture of interconnected hubs and spokes, the new movement was a coalition of coalitions, a decentralized network of campaigns 'intricately and tightly linked to one another.'
The net allows large mobilizations to unfold with minimal bureaucracy and hierarchy. 'Forced consensus and labored manifestoes are fading into the background,' Klein wrote in 2000, 'replaced instead by a culture of constant, loosely structured, and sometimes compulsive information-swapping.' "