Obama Brings Internet Communications to World Diplomacy

by Ken Orr

Throughout history, major shifts in communication technology have brought on major changes in politics and business, exploited by imaginative politicians and businesspeople. In the 1930s, for example, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolph Hitler reached out via the radio to far more people than had ever heard directly from politicians. Businesses quickly began to use radio to advertise. In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy did the same thing by grasping the power of TV to reach huge audiences. And in the last US presidential election, Barack Obama created a new kind of political campaign that made up for his lack of experience and deep pockets by exploiting the Internet in all its dimensions: e-mail, instant messaging, social networking, video over the Internet, and so on. Now we are just beginning to see the possibilities of using this new technology to change governing and foreign policy as well.