IS IT A TRANSITION OR A REVOLUTION

The power relationships in the world are currently undergoing a fundamental structural change, largely attributable to the microchip's transformation of the information technologies. The losers of power in this change are hierarchical organizational structures everywhere which have historically been erected and sustained on the control of limited information. The effect of the change is analogous to the Renaissance, when the clerical hierarchies lost their control of information to new secular enterprises. This time, however, the diffusion of power is much more widespread; and the drama of the next few decades is how power will accrete in the new electronic networks that are rapidly shrinking the globe.