Is an Electronic Collection of Individuals Better than an Elected Government Collective?

I see the elimination of gatekeepers everywhere.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, on the outcome of the electronic revolution bonanza

May 20, 2012

What do you call billions of people connecting on Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, and Google?

Do you call it a google of individual voices, a gaggle, a disconnected boondoggle?

Or, do you call it, as Thomas Friedman regrets in today’s New York Times,  “A World without Gatekeepers”?

Or, do you call it, as I do in this regrettable light verse,  “A World of Single Mind-sweepers ”?

Whatever you call it, never have individuals been so empowered.

Never have collectives felt so disemboweled and disempowered.

Has it come to this:  that the only things government can do itself is “medicate, educate, and incarcerate”?

And what individuals can suddenly do for themselves  is  “investigate, cerebrate, and innovate?”

Source: Thomas Friedman, “Winning in World Without Gatekeepers, “ New York Times, May 20, 2012