How do New Norms Supersede the Old? Its the Internet Stupid
Normative Shift by Coral Bell This fascinating document discusses the way actions and assumptions about the way the world works can make sudden, and hitherto unpredictable shifts. She considers the processes that contribute to changes in "what is expected and required", in other words, our norms of behaviour. She looks at the way..

a confluence of developments that reached "critical mass" only in the last decade of the 20th century has induced a rapid shift from one more or less logically inclusive set of international norms to another. Note that I do not say that this shift is from old norms to new, for some of those norms now most vital to understanding world politics date back to the just war doctrine of the 5th century, and are to be found in Hugo Grotius. The shift is rather from "realist/nationalist" norms to alternatives that may in part be called "cosmopolitan" (as opposed to "internationalist"). But the shift toward cosmopolitan norms, which we will examine below, though rapid, is tentative and incomplete because it is related both to technologies and power structures that are still evolving. It may never be universal, and it is still potentially reversible.

Bell identifies three vital drivers of these changes

First of these in time, but not in importance, has been the institutionalization of diplomacy. That must be dated from 1945 (with 1919 as a "false dawn"), but it has only reached critical mass in the past decade or two. Second, and much more recent, is the end of the Cold War and the advent of the unipolar world, which dates from the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. I will return to these two factors in due course, but for now we dwell on the third and most fundamental factor: the information/ communications revolution.

We proponents of the ICT "Revolution" have never believed that it is all about eCommerce and certainly that it is not a "new Media" environment, although both of those have their place. I have been saying for 7 years now that this technology is rewiring our brains. It is changing not only what we think, but what we can think and the way we think. Its good to find soemone with some research to start backing that up.