Man, in college did I piss off the administration. We were adopting a curriculum shift; one I felt discarded solid courses teaching fundamental skills (like Western Civ) in exchange for flaky peripheral courses focusing on trendy topics.

I was editor of the school paper, and I loved the catbird seat in which I found myself. I sat back and blasted the academic dean in hard-hitting (and very biased) editorials week after week. While the old-school University board of directors loved it, the administration hated it. What was their recourse?

A paltry letter to the editor? Fast-forward to now. What if the school paper were online versus print, and social in nature allowing for comments, community, and feedback?

The academic dean with whom I tore into with great pleasure and perhaps reckless abandon could have sat back and done nothing: Others would have picked up the fight and battled for him. I can imagine the dozens of angry students and offended professors who could have commented on our paper's website. Or started their own blogs, websites and social communities with platforms such as Blogger and Ning.

This academic dean in my sights now would have potentially dozens or hundreds of others making his case for him, across several diverse Internet channels from Twitter to Facebook. A pitch for curriculum change he once gave likely only to the board would now be heard to anyone with Internet access.

That's true democracy in action: That's the potential use of the Internet to support the very principles I was fighting to keep alive. At the least, it would have made the fight a fair one in terms of open public conversation.

That's the power of the Net, empowering people from all walks of life to magnify their collective voices a thousand times over. The Net will always have highly revered figureheads for whom many take a collective bow. But the very nature of 2.0 communities means dissenters are guaranteed a seat at the table; if they are not offered a seat they can simply create one, sit down, and start talking.

I look forward to this election cycle as a showcase for the future direction of social media's capabilities, power and reach. Hillary's using the Net in a powerful fashion; and look at what conservative Mike Huckabee did by tapping the Internet superstar Chuck Norris in an effort to win over youngsters more likely to lean Democrat.

The people are speaking, every day and every second. And every message, every comment, every single blog entry has the capability to be the next shot heard 'round the world.