So, here's a provocative question - if the answer is social networking, what was the question?
It's easy to be carried away these days by an uncritical tidal wave of emotional engagement with the wonderful world of social networking with its evocative call to connect, communicate and collaborate.
And the evidence is mounting that we're past the stage of passing fad - 70 million blogs and counting, 120,000 new blogs created every day, the social photo site Flickr uploading anything up to 5,000 pictures or more every minute of the day. In 2007, Forrester research suggested that nearly 70% of 12-21 year olds were actively involved in social networks of one sort or another.
A new "point of view" paper from Cisco confronts one of the big questions facing government and public policy arising from this astonishing phenomenon:
So how does the phenomenon of social networking affect government? Why should the ability of a single user to share a video of a skateboarding dog with a global audience of more than 100 million cause governments fundamentally to rethink not only how they interact with citizens, but what they actually do?