Especially when they're located in remote areas, small towns have their secrets, kept from the world at large but common knowledge to everyone who lives there. Before the advent of citizen journalism—perpetrated, mostly, by irritating upstart bloggers and their cohorts—spreading the word beyond geographic boundaries required more than just a computer with an Internet connection.
One particularly intriguing example of the new mass-communication comes from a tiny spot on the map, appropriately named Hope, Alaska. From there, it seems, one blogger effectively spread a simple letter from a fellow Alaskan to the world, and in record time. Of course, the blog post generated a great deal of interest due to its timely political content, but what's more interesting to me is the manner in which that content was broadcast to the planet, and the speed at which it flew.
Knowledge is power, but controlling—or preventing control of—its flow has a lot to do with who's in power, and for how long.
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