This is obvious where trade is concerned. eBay is an open line of communication which allows people to arrange transactions where one person gets richer, another gets something they like, and both are happier. Social media allow people to support each other and coordinate in a multitude of ways. While we haven't yet mastered this stuff - the interface between life and technology being somewhat wild and unstable - we're making progress.
Of course, where new lines of communication are added, and new arrangements start being pointed out, it can easily mean that that arrangements made begin to escape the present controls. Tax evasion on eBay income is one manifestation of this. So are sudden protests arranged in dictatorial nations.
Open lines of communication don't create this effect. But they allow it, accelerate it, and enhance it. In Tunisia, in Egypt, protests and change are the order of our times. Perhaps these quick events will go further now, or perhaps they'll slow down for a time. But only for a time, I suspect, for the reasons I've stated above.
The information age has only begun; it is immature. But it is by nature transparent, instantaneous, well-informed. This is a world now where a protest that is put down by the police can be and will be broadcast with or without the consent of the government, even where attempts to shut down the internet occur. Where diplomatic cables can be spread worldwide by snarking stoolpigeons, and that's just how it goes. This is bad news not just for tyrants, but for much of the business of politics - for all the dishonest action, and for a share of the honest action, too.
Where we make a positive arrangement with a dictator, we have failed to make a thousand positive arrangements with a people. This has always been true, but it has been easier to make that one arrangement in the past; that's where the lines were open.
In the future? There are good reasons to think that it will be otherwise.
