ractive forums. Activists of all stripes now have the freedom and
facility to network and organise across vast geographical, national,
racial and even ideological differences. And they've begun to do so.
The best evidence we have that something truly new is going on is our
mainstream media's inability to understand it. Major American news
outlets are still incapable of acknowledging the tremendous breadth of
the WTO protest movement because of the multiplicity of cooperating
factions within it. Unable to draw out a single, simplified rationale
that encompasses the logic of each and every protestor, traditional
media storytellers conclude that there is no logic at all. (Just as I
am writing this section, a newscaster on CNBC, reporting from a WTO
demonstration, is condescendingly laughing at the word 'neo-liberal'
on a placard, believing that the teen protestor holding it has
invented the term!) In actuality, the multi-faceted rationale
underlying the WTO protests confirm both their broad based support, as
well as the quite evolved capacity of its members to coalesce across
previously unimaginable ideological chasms. Indeed, these obsolete
ideologies are themselves falling away as a new dynamic emerges from
nascent political organism.

For politicians who mean to lead more effectively in such an
environment, the interactive solution may well be a new emphasis on
education, where elected leaders use the internet to engage with
constituents and justify the decisions they have made on our behalf,
rather than simply soliciting our moment-to-moment opinions.
Politicians cannot hope to reduce the collective will of their entire
constituencies into a series of yes or no votes on the issues put
before them. They can, however, engage the public in an ongoing
exploration and dialogue on issues and their impacts, and attempt to
provide a rationale for their roles in the chamber in which they
participate. They must accept that their constituents are capable of
comprehending legislative bodies as functioning organisms. In doing
so, politicians will relieve themselves of the responsibility for
hyping or spinning their decisions and instead use their time with the
public to engage them in the evolution of the legislative process.
Like teachers and religious leaders, whose roles as authority figures
have been diminished by their students' and congregants' direct access
to formerly secret data, politicians too must learn to function more