Get smart
The overthrow of autocratic Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak earlier this month after weeks of youth-led and Facebook-fueled protests may have been the most high-profile example of technology-backed people power. But it will likely not be the last, according to Joseph Nye, a University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). “It’s not that governments aren’t the most important actors on the stage of world politics,” Nye said between stops on a book tour for “The Future of Power.” “It’s that the stage is now much more crowded.” What the United States and other powerful nations are facing, Nye contends, is an unprecedented shift in power, both away from the traditionally dominant West to the East, and away from states to nonstate actors — everyone from hackers and terrorists to billionaire philanthropists to the whistleblowers of WikiLeaks. To manage these trends, Nye argues in his new book, America will have to get...