Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but this is getting really strange.
Republican Newt Gingrich, that disciple of futurist Alvin Toffler, and Democrat Al Gore, of information superhighway fame, are both championing the Digital Age.
Ralph Nader, on the left, and Pat Buchanan, on the right, both tried to kill the North American Free Trade Agreement that arguably will help take us there. The American Civil Liberties Union, that liberal bastion, teamed with Rush Limbaugh, the darling of conservatives, to help defeat the federal government's attempt to clamp a security measure on the Internet, called the Clipper Chip.
And out there in the heartland, gun-toting libertarians and pot-smoking hippies are speaking the same language of cyberspace.
What's going on here?
Here's one way to look at it: When a society's fundamental technologies change and its economy begins to transform, the political and social institutions inevitably follow.
We're seeing the surface political chaos that's rooted in a much more fundamental shift of our society from the Industrial Age, an age of motors, to the Digital Age, an age of microprocessors. We're at a point now when our society straddles those two ages: The old system doesn't work, and the new system is not up and running yet. And our politics and our government reflect that paralyzed moment of transition.
The early signs of that are all around us -- starting with the gridlock in Washington. For the last 15 years, as our world became dramatically more complex and fast-paced, we've watched our federal government become increasingly paralyzed. The political institutions can't formulate bold enough policies. And the hierarchal bureaucracies, the epitome of the Industrial Age, can't effectively carry them out.
Meanwhile, frustration with Washington mounts. People need to solve the problems of their lives, yet they increasingly feel the federal government simply can't do it. A recent Roper poll showed that only 22 percent of Americans trusted the government in Washington to do what's right most of the time. That compares to 73 percent in the late 1950s -- at the crowning moment of the Industrial Age.
Pundits, think tanks, politicians are kicking around all kinds of ideas about what to do. Officials now talk about "reinventing" government much as their private-sector counterparts talk about "reengineering" the corporation. They're essentially the same concepts of adopting new technologies, downsizing the work force and decentralizing decisionmaking.
Others want to tinker with the system. Some say the problem has to do with too many lobbyists -- we need campaign finance reform. Others say the problem is entrenched political elites -- we need term limits. Still others say the problem is the existing political parties -- we need a third major political party.
But under the surface of these efforts, a deeper movement is forming, one that may have far more profound effects. We're watching a cleaving of our national politics into two camps: those whose interests remain in the Industrial Age system and those whose interests are hooked to the emerging Digital Age.
That's what's behind the strange alignment of political bedfellows. That's a key insight of Alvin and Heidi Toffler, who, since the early 1980s, have talked about the clash of "second wave" industrial society with a "third wave" Information Age society.
The politics of the Digital Age obliterates the political labels that made sense of the past age. The words liberal and conservative have lost their meanings when Gingrich, the leader considered most "radical" (as in scrap the system), is labeled a "conservative" (as in preserve the status quo), while he favors positions considered more classically "liberal" (as in limit government and maximize individual liberty). Just last week, Gingrich confounded some of his conservative allies by opposing a controversial bill that supporters think will curb pornography on the Internet.
You won't get much more help looking at the affiliation of the two major political parties. The Democratic party was born at the dawn of the Industrial Age in the United States -- more than 160 years ago. The Republicans weren't far behind -- they were born more than 140 years ago. Yet those party labels don't translate into today's Industrial Age/Digital Age split. Members of both parties align on both sides of that divide.
The political labels of the Digital Age have not emerged yet. That's why we must go back to what politics is all about in the first place. When you get down to it, the question is: Where do your interests lie?
If, like unions, you've done pretty well under the old system and aren't so sure about the new, you'll fight for preservation. That's how Nader, defending working people, ended up on the same side as Buchanan on NAFTA, which probably will destroy Industrial Age jobs in this country in the short run but bring more Digital Age "knowledge jobs" in the long run.
If, on the other hand, your interests lie in the world of the new technologies, then you'll probably overcome old animosities to forge new alliances. That's partly why the ACLU, in its efforts to protect free speech, joined with Limbaugh, who promotes more liberty for the individual. They both want to keep the anarchic Internet free from government eavesdropping.
Right-wing libertarians and countercultural hippies might not see eye to eye on a range of lifestyle issues, but they hold other key core values in common. They value more self-reliance and less government intrusion. They want autonomy, a hallmark of the new age.
The political alignment of these two factions has just begun. The issues that will separate them are just being defined.
But it's this watershed formation of these two camps, more than anything else, that will define the politics of the new Digital Age.
