I've just finished reading "Blog," by Hugh Hewitt. I found the book very intriguing and thought provoking. Prior to that, I'd read "An Army of Davids," by Glenn Reynolds. These two books got me to thinking about the "super-empowered individual" referred to in Mr. Reynolds' book and the "blog swarms" mentioned in Mr. Hewitt's book.

I was going to write about how these two descriptions of recent phenomena parallel parts of the war on terror. I had considered the characteristics of these individuals as similar - small, fast, communicative (or networked if you will), frequently with shared goals and similar methods for achieving the goals, but also individually no match for the defensive units of the "mainstream" or institutional elements opposed to these swarms.

I want to explore several features of the super-empowered individual, both strenghts and weaknesses over several posts. I see a lot of debate on other weblogs about whether this is a successful way to achieve an objective (not necessarily wage a war) or not.