Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy

Tommie Smith and John Carlos

Years before there were hyperlinks, on October 16, 1968 two SJSU
students found a way to get their message across that circumvented the
existing command and control structure. The photograph of the two black
sprinters standing on the medal podium with their heads bowed and their
fists raised during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics remains a dramatic
moment in this country's civil rights movement.

Today when I visited our university's alumni association I bought a
poster of that moment. It reminds me that some things are more important
than our jobs and our careers and are worth taking a risk for and
fighting for. Freedom of speech, freedom to link, comment and trackback
and freedom to have conversations and to put those conversations on the
Internet where they can spawn other conversations and new ideas is what
emerging technology is all about.

This is where we cut through the haze and the smokescreens and the BS
that has been and is business as usual and where we fix things and make
the world a better place. You and I and all of us who partake in the
global conversation; in my heart I believe we have the power to do
that.

What Smith and Carlos did was a kind of a hyperlink. Their
statement was a way of linking the fact that we have a wonderful country
with wonderfully talented people with the fact that we have oppression
here, people who are not being heard here and other issues here that
need attention.

In my opinion, theirs was not an act of disloyalty, it was an act of
love and passion for what they believe in. I am proud that they were
such great Americans that they took that risk. I am even prouder that
they were students of San Jose State University.