We're seeing another "social media revolution" - fuelled by Facebook (et al) on one side and old-school TV stations controlled by local oligarchs on the other.

We're seeing another "social media revolution" - fuelled by Facebook (et al) on one side and old-school TV stations controlled by local oligarchs on the other. Young, high tech, well-dressed, global 'hipsters' who live online versus older people, mostly rural, former communists, peasants or factory workers, who have no hope of adapting to the new incomprehensible tech world around them. People from the first group work mostly at multinationals or are entrepreneurs/artists/etc while the second group live on state pensions or have administrative roles offered by the ruling political party - the modernised communists. First group are people who've tasted freedom and are trying to live 'independent' lives, while the second group cannot imagine living without a strict social hierarchy, in which one must do what he's told - vestige of the communist system, in which everybody had his 'master'. The second group has had numerical majority in the December elections - because of better mobilisation, so they elected the party who promised them higher pensions and other populist dreams.. We've seen this phenomenon play out in many countries already. So far these protests have been peaceful - these young people know how to behave peacefully in crowds - after having enjoyed themselves at massive festivals and concerts that have invaded the post-communist Romania in the last decade or so. Let's hope that they stay that way - there are some evil slogans being shouted on both sides, but so far the youth has had the upper hand, combined with the moral handicap of the second group - turns out not all of them want to save the criminals and corrupt oligarchs from prisons. What's next ? The crowd won, the government withdrew the controversial ordinance, but how will they be able to continue business as usual now that they've accepted their own incompetence just one month after taking office ? Will they do another stupid thing and have the crowds 'fix' it for them ? If this happens, then why not actually implement it in software and avoid massive mobilisation risking all kinds of crowd-related dangers ? Unfortunately this is where Facebook falls short - it's good at creating massive crowds - but stops being useful once crowds are in place. I think it's up to Romanians now to invent a new system of government, where the crowd can have a voice without filling the streets every week. Representative democracy is unable to cope with the new technological realities so I think it's time to move on to the next level of governance. Time to move the government into the smartphones - replace Facebook with 'Society OS' (or extend Facebook to include it). My biggest hope is that the transition to this new society will be peaceful and devoid of violence.