By now, you’ve probably seen video’s and pictures of the massive protest movements currently happening around the world, in places like Hong Kong, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Spain, France, and more.

The primary motivating forces driving people to mass protest appears to be poverty, social inequality & injustices, govt. corruption, inflation, and more.

Many people in the countries where mass protests are currently happening, have been suffering from poverty and social injustices for decades, so why all of the sudden are all these protests breaking out now?.

In my opinion; One of the big reasons massive protests around the world are breaking out now is due to a convergence of 3 key technologies, those being; (1) Cheap Smart-Phones, (2) Internet connectivity (3) Mature Social Media networks … the mass proliferation & adoption of each of these 3 technologies have combined into a massive network effect, and have for the first time in history, empowered the citizenry with the means to organize & demonstrate en-masse easily & cheaply.

Without the combination of cheap Smart-Phones, Social Media networks, & the Internet, the people really don’t have the ability to organize in a super quick & affordable manner … which is something the Govt. of Iran recently realized when it shut-down the internet in Iran in an attempt to quell mass protests inside it’s borders.

I think it’s a great thing that the people now have the means to organize and demonstrate in a super efficient & affordable manner … a recent example of how this new ability to organize & successfully demonstrate for democracy was seen in Hong Kong, where pro-democracy voters where able to wrest back control of political power from the former repressive regime.