According to International Relations theorist and University of Toronto professor Ronald J. Deibert, there is a way that a postmodern political order can be (at least partially) explained.

     In Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation, Deibert writes the following:

     "…the landscape of world politics is undergoing rapid and fundamental transformations related to the advent of digital-electronic telecommunications—what I call the hypermedia environment…"

     Deibert sees a historical precedent for "rapid and fundamental transformations" with the advent of printing technology. The printing press allowed such innovations as written contracts, and written laws, which Deiberts says greatly helped form the basis for the modern world order.  He suggests that there was a transition from fuedal society that fit the following contours: 

     "contractarian socioeconomic relations [were] ‘transitional’ insofar as [they] had a leveling effect on the personalistic ties of fuedal social relations and opened up the possibility of rule from a single center. Finally, the distributional properties of printing favored the strategic interests of centralizing state monarchs who, in alliance with the urban bourgeoisie, set about creating standardized rational policies, and impersonal bureaucracies to administer them over clearly defined territorial spaces."

     It is the idea (and indeed the existence) of these "territorial spaces" that Deibert identifies as in jeopardy of fading away in the new world of electronic communications. In his conception of the future, he sees a leveling--or equalization--of power between nations, corporations, and special interest or "international watchdog" groups (Amnesty International, Greenpeace, etc.) competing for political, social and economic power. These latter "international watchdog" groups might be identified with many current independent publishers. Although both small publishers and these international groups share certain activist/democratic belief structures, these international groups already have a tremendous advantage in terms of organization and power that small publishers generally lack. Deibert writes:

     "The monopoly claims of territorial states over legitimate authority…are increasingly challenged by global civil society networks that buttress their actions on wider, universalist aspirations."

     And:

     "…while they lack the structural power of global market forces, many of them do increasingly have what might be called (borrowing from Michael Mann) ‘interstitial’ power—that is, legitimate influence on the borders and in the margins, over specific issue areas."

     Clearly, in Deibert’s ultimate conception of the future, the "interstitial" power of these groups will come to occupy a new position on an equal footing with many others, including nations (which will become "regions"), and corporations. In this world the idea of "independence"—whether in publishing, or anything else--becomes obsolete and replaced with "interdependence." The "competition" between these groups more accurately resembles "cooperation." In his book, Deibert states that the entire idea of "nationalism" would never have arisen if not for the printed word and the centralized power that it represents and thereby permits. In the new electronic world, political power will be diffuse, existing across (if not erasing) current economic, social, and national boundaries.

     To restate and sum up the conclusion: the entire organizing concept of centralized authority that Lanham, O’Donnell, and Deibert see as stemming from the written--or more specifically printed--word will be an impossibility in the future electronic environment. What we are left with is a uniquely egalitarian "new world order" where, as Deibert says, "… the social constructs, symbolic forms, and cognitive biases loosely orbiting around the current of thought known as ‘postmodernism’ will likely resonate today and in the future as a result of a ‘fitness’ or match between this social epistemology and the hypermedia environment."

     Well, that is saying quite a bit, certainly more than can be covered adequately here. 

     Postmodern egalitarianism and equality is quite likely a dreamer’s fiction to begin with. Even Deibert, who takes all of this farther than anyone I have ever read, can at best only describe a postmodern world that still contains large, powerful organizations that must somehow, mysteriously cooperate with one another in an unexplained non-hierarchical environment. And what about all the people that will live in the world where these "universalist" powers happily coexist? Will the world’s population understand (much less subscribe to) the same goals as these worldwide powers? Or doesn’t it matter?

   What we end up with is the lazy idea of carefree, perfect future that will require almost no effort to achieve.  Somehow, we humans are smart enough to have finally developed technology that will transform the way we have consistently abused, exploited and alienated one another throughout the entirety of our existence.

   Making the statement "readers will become authors" is like saying "throwers will become catchers." ("Our entire concept of throwing will be changed!") We could let this rest at the level of semantic trickery, but certainly there is a point being made by equating the reader and author. The idea that readers and authors share certain similarities, or share certain control over the communicative process, is probably sufficient. This can be said whether our medium is print, or electronic. But, very real questions remain, even if we allow a "give and take" relationship between authors and readers in the production of texts. How much power is assigned to the author, and how much to the reader? What kinds of texts are produced? What values do they reflect? And, in the presumed absence of a power differential between authors and readers, is there also a presumed equality between all ideologies, such that there is no longer any question social domination and repression?
 

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