Compare the WTO’s description of the Seattle 1999 conference to Wikipedia’s. Which seems more historically open, honest, and accurate to you?

I was at the Battle in Seattle with a group of legal “witnesses”. We were there to observe the demonstrations, in an effort to reduce the risk of violence and prevent human rights abuses. It was a monumental occasion for me personally, and it may go down in history as a global societal tipping point between open and closed governance models.

Consider Clay Shirky’s views regarding social media as an emerging field of philosophical political economic inquiry.

Consider this 1999 statement from Sierra Club Exectutive Director Carl Pope:

“What happened in Seattle was that the secretive, closed-door, corporate-dominated process broke down, and I don’t think they can put it together again.”

Consider the role that seattle.indymedia.org played in coordinating and publicizing the demonstrations and aftermath. I’m not personally aligned with their politics, and it’s more interesting to me to understand the role their site played in Seattle. By all accounts, their influence was huge.

Compare that to the subsequent explosive growth of online political organizing, and the corporate recognition that citizen bloggers are now an important dimension of the public relations landscape.

I try to keep politics out of this blog. My own personal politics are immaterial to your business. Yet it’s difficult (and at times meaningless) to write about trends affecting the economy without acknowledging the political environment.

And so I’m just publicly wondering; when will we declare the end of closed processes in American public business and governance?

I agree with Carl Pope that we witnessed the de facto end in Seattle, November, 1999. I’m increasingly studying social media strategies because I think they’re affecting a profound change in business and society.