In one of my favorite Richard Thieme talks at Black hat, he exhorted us to look to the edges to find where the new realities are forming. The consensus reality of today is one thing, but the new realities creep in from the edges outside of today's norms.
Sports has been one area in American life where we can clearly see this happen. We have had Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball long before Martin Luther King Jr and others brought this to the wider society. In 1966, we saw Red Auerbach name Bill Russell the first African American coach, 42 years before Americans signed up to have Barack Obama run the whole country.
Of course, not all the new developments are positive, witness the ongoing sagas in steroids in sports which we will likely also see in wider circulation throughout society with things like biotech, genetic modifications and so on.
On a related note, last we just had a case of information leakage in pro sports via Twitter. In the NBA this off season people have been wondering if coach Kevin McHale would be coming back next season, while fans waited for some kind of news Minnesota Timberwolves rookie star Kevin Love tweeted
"Today is a sad day. Kevin McHale will NOT be back as head coach."
Turned out to be true. Only thing was the Timberwolves had not issued any official statement of the sort. Love's explanation was that he assumed that everyone already knew. Normal behavior from an insider, but a good example of information breaching the walls, and not through malice, just through increased connectivity. Now that we see the template in sports, it will be interesting to see these things play out in wider population
klove and not teheran as your reference point? homer!
Posted by: chris | June 18, 2009 at 12:05 PM
Iran is another interesting case, but slightly different. I think everyone should read this piece by Tom Barnett though
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/war-room/obama-iran-election-061809
Posted by: Gunnar | June 18, 2009 at 12:08 PM
Information tends towards disclosure...
(in the vein of the universe tending towards chaos...)
Posted by: LonerVamp | June 19, 2009 at 03:53 PM
actually, the pirate bay trial has also known an info leak a few months ago:
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-loses-courtroom-leak-from-trustworthy-source-090417/
there was a leak for the verdict before the official verdict, using twitter
Posted by: meik | June 23, 2009 at 03:44 AM
Great read for the day !
Posted by: CML Pro Sports | September 14, 2009 at 05:33 AM