1/x in which the Business Monk reflects on Tech, Business, Politics, and Power... and the Facebook Oversight Board. What are the balances that make life livable? Which are the struggles we should pay attention to? #facebookoversightboard

2/x Social structures, politics are strongly influenced by communications structures in society.

3/x Consider, for instance, the printing press as a potential driver of the bourgeois revolution in early modernity.

4/x Bourgeoisie ultimately (messily) negotiated with nobility, commoners to develop democratic structures (accommodate popular voice but give business elite a relatively free hand).

5/x Facebook, social media are creating a new communications substructure for society.

6/x Facebook leaders, other tech elite are our emergent new oligarchy.

7/x With these communications and power evolutions, political structures will necessarily be renegotiated.

8/x Facebook Oversight Board is a move, however partial, however unsatisfactory, towards expanded accountability by Facebook.

9/x We will need more such moves in order to have an accountable politic system.

10/x But Facebook et al. may increasingly play a central role here in the struggle between the new oligarchy and the masses, middle classes.

11/x Let's not delude ourselves, however, into thinking that democracy was ever a pure system. It has represented a detente between the previous oligarchs and the masses.

12/x We should let go of our shock re these new patterns and prepare for new struggles. We should be open, similarly, to new political approaches and institutions.

13/13 The Business Monk says this is a time to let go and recalibrate. The goal is not to hold on to old forms but to ensure balance and accountability in a new world.