So Smoothie wants some meat to argue about.  I'm game. 

At some point last year I started rolling around an idea for a project -- maybe a book I'd write, maybe a documentary film I'd shoot -- about how the internet is changing the world.  The goal of this book/film would be to take a step back and view the advent of the internet (really the digitization of information and all subsequent consequences -- both positive and negative) in light of all human history.  Just how big a deal, historically speaking, is this democratized, social media?  I threw this essay up on Candleblog at the time and it engendered a good discussion in the comments that basically broke down along optimist/pessimist lines w/r/t technological advances (not sure why the formatting is messed up for that post - sorry).  A bit later, I linked to an essay by Clay Shirky about the freedoms that are inherent to the internet, which also got me excited about this stuff.

At SXSW 2008 I heard an amazing talk by Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson that totally inspired me and got me thinking about this stuff again.  I'm also reading Shirky's new book, Here Comes Everybody, right now, and it's got my brain juices frothing again too.

So on the plane back from Texas last week, I started making some notes.  Here's the basic thesis of the potential project (which should sound familiar to regular Candleblog readers):

There have been four major (read: overwhelmingly huge) advancements in information technology in human history:

1.    invention of language (way long ago)
2.    invention of writing (~ 4th millennium BC?)
3.    invention of movable type (1400s)
4.    digitization of information (1900s)

Thesis: each of these advancements is fundamentally democratizing.  Humanity has become unambiguously more “free” as a result of each.  This is not to say there are no negative consequences resulting from this freedom.  The Protestant Reformation, which is largely regarded by historians to have only been possible following the advent of movable type, was bloody and contentious.  These major advancements in IT bring with them tremendous upheaval as humanity undergoes the litany of changes that result from the technologies, but the net result of each period of change is more freedom.

Making a successful case for this argument will require learning a lot about each of these periods in human history and showing the pattern that I'm suggesting (if it indeed exists).  Ideally though, the historical background will serve mostly as analogies to what's happening now, with the bulk of the project focusing on the current upheaval.  In particular, the project will focus on the internet's effects on: journalism, filmmaking, social activism, the music industry, politics (and the democratic political process) and bottom-up organizing (wikipedia, the Dean campaign, craigslist, etc.).

Please note that this is merely the result of some free-form thinking and not the result of careful research.  I'm putting it up on Candleblog to elicit some similarly free-form responses.  Can this case be made?  Do you disagree with the premise?  Am I missing some huge thing that should be obvious to me?  And finally, the important question: book, doc or neither?