Mike Lewis: "The open revolution was a complete surprise for many, including here in the United States"

On the article by Sascha Matuszak, China's Internet Generation, there was a TV article here about the revolution in Serbia which deposed Slobodan Milosevic. The revolution used computers extensively to sustain its communications and logic. I would like to comment that the logic which is most effective in political revolution is that intrinsic to the computer, and its advantage consists in that the central logical functions (of interest since ancient logic of Plato's syllogisms in Greece) of AND, OR, NOT, IF and so on, have become quickly standardized and understood by everybody throughout the world. It is an extremely fertile soup for correct goals in popular revolution.

In the article, the Internet is described as everywhere, political revolution is not generally the topic in the Internet cafes, and the CPR is very cautious about that subject. It seems that the revolution enhanced by the Internet is one which is rather a tacit change in people's minds, in the manner of their logic, and does not depend on or require the sustained, intense debates such as in earlier times. I recall how humor for instance was communicated in Krokodil and how the humor had to be so carefully separated from the political news, and so on. Now the computer sits there and makes human logic available with both humor and political news of very serious import, instantly and automatically.

That is why the new revolutions are taking the old guard by surprise so much: the old guard expects armed resistance, violence, reprisals, hidden planning and so on and those things don't happen when they should. Maybe they will in future, and if they do, we hope they are for the good. But the open revolution was a complete surprise for many, including here in the United States.

Will look for cartoons in PRAVDA.Ru, as humor is very important to me; it is a kind of prophesy.

Mike Lewis Seattle