Hi Bill,

In a word - "Yup". I've been researching this phenomenon since 1986, and there is a lot of material on it - Castells' The Rise of Network Society comes to mind (if you can overlook his rather simplistic Structural Marxist theoretical base). I wrote a book chapter on this in The Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate back in 2000 arguing that the "search for meaning" is now operating in a Hunter-Gatherer mode with the rise of communities of interest, communities of practice and contingent communities, and an article using some of the same ideas in the practice of establishing strategic alliances in business (warning, that one's really theoretical).

I think there were some really good posts in the Tactical Blogging thread that Rob started a while back that were trying to grapple with the issue of broadcast IO/PSYOPs vs ground level / interactive IO/PSYOPs.

Marc