With the SOPA bill shelved it brings attention to the effect the Internet has on the "real world". I was amazed at the almost instant result the strike had on congress and the main steam media. Many people did not even know that there was an actual rally of people outside capitol hill.
This outcome has opened up a whole new way to effect a government. Now I know that the Internet has had impacts before of the government, but not so quick or as massive. The strike essentially shut down a bill that has been worked on for months in a matter of hours and only a small percentage of websites participating. I do understand that google had a partial strike and wikipedia had a full strike, so that's two major sites, but its still a small amount.
What would have happened if there was a bill that was designed to allow a new health care bill and we had an 80% shutdown of the entire Internet to protest the bill. I am not sure that we could complete certain amounts of work done. I use Google on a regular basis at work to find answers to questions and search forums for feed back on new products. The strike would keep me from completing these tasks. I am certain that the way people use the Google engine it would stop many things from happening. It may be as simple as having a few 404 errors to change the path of a major bill in the US senate.
Thats some major food for thought.
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