"Over at tech-report.com they are having their Friday night topic on whether we are witnessing the decline of western civilization or not. Here is my response:

I think we are witnessing both the decline of the old culture, and something new emerging in the trenches. We are seeing the old structures, the old art, literature, behaviors, all of these things succumbing to rapid social and technological change. We had modernism, post-modernism, and now the death of post-modernism. We've had music, re-mixed music, and now re-mixed re-mixes. We have people like Eminem who emobdy this creative deconstructionism. We are also seeing the western (corrupted) politic going thru its last, desperate moves for total world domination, and possible destruction on a massive global scale. In part, this is simply nature taking its course with the old power elite. Their days are numbered and they know it. Thats why they are reacting with draconian legislation like the DMCA, PATRIOT 1 and possibly II, Total Information Awareness, etc. But they won't be able to keep up in the end with the highly coherent, decentralized, ad-hoc network of like minds that is emerging. We are witnessing the birth of network culture - a global brain if you will.

This new emergent decentralized global brain is more cohesive, more intelligent than anything before it. Assuming the old structures don't collapse catastrophically, we will live to see the birth of a full-fledged networked culture ushering in a new renaissance of creativity and innovation beyond everything thats happened before it combined."