Empowerment of individuals: Now individuals are more powerful than ever.

Empowerment of individuals: Now individuals are more powerful than ever.

Once I was doing my routine research work in my PhD office at Adam Smith Building in the University of Glasgow, UK. A strange air noise was constantly disturbing my ...focus on the work. I came out of the building and looked up in the air where two helicopters were hovering at 30-angled position. This was something unusual and difficult to interpret.

I asked a Scottish student about this. He told that these are the Glasgow police helicopters that are monitoring an illegal party in the Kelvingrove Park where around 10,000 people gathered to have a fun. I asked why it is illegal.

He told that this party is arranged by two young students on face book without formal permission from the council.

This was amazing that two individuals were able to have an effect on thousands of people and administration of the Glasgow.

Apart from this general observation, in effect, there are number of classic examples that highlight how individuals have been empowered in the recent times.

For example, in August 1991, Tim Berners-Lee alone invented World Wide Web (WWW).

Thomas Edison invented light bulb but he was supported with dozens of people in his lab. William Shockley invented transistor but two of his assistance actually built it. Internet was invented by the contribution of many people. However, the WWW is Berners-Lee’s alone.

How Firefox came about? Recently, Black Ross a 19 year old from Stanford and Ben Goodger a 24 year old from New Zealand, starting from the two ends of the world, in an open source community for free, produced a browser that captured 5% of the Internet Explorer market in about six months.

Now, the era of uploading has given unique opportunities of affecting others. Therefore, now individuals are more powerful than they were in the past.