Representatives of more than 190 governments begin a profoundly important 12-day closed-door meeting in Dubai on Monday to hammer out how the Internet should be run and who should pay for its operation.

The International Telecommunication Union, a low-profile United Nations agency that's sponsoring the meeting, sets out the technical standards for the world's communication technologies, and the last time the group met was in 1988, when the information superhighway was geek talk and the World Wide Web didn't exist. The Internet's subsequent explosive growth occurred not so much because of the ITU but despite it.

In the wake of the housing market crash in the U.S. and the subsequent financial crisis, the Obama administration created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The Bureau is using crowd-sourcing technology to collect tips from millions of consumers about deceptive new financial practices, from misleading mortgages and improper “gotcha” fees on credit cards to outright fraud.

The Harper government is doing enormous damage to Canada’s international reputation by refusing to show any leadership on the global warming issue. Fortunately, around the world there are already hundreds (if not thousands) of non-governmental projects under way to help cut carbon emissions. Everyone, from scientists to schoolchildren, is participating. As government foot-dragging continues, amplifying grassroots energies offer the best short-term hope for meaningful action.

We should know within a matter of weeks if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is extradited from England to Sweden, where he faces sexual assault charges. But even if Assange ends up behind bars and has his website taken down, others will be happy to take his place. Think of the whack-a-mole game at the arcade. Hit one on the head and another will pop up.

WikiLeaks is just one example of why I say we are entering an era of hyper-transparency. Courtesy of the Internet, people everywhere have at their fingertips the most powerful tool ever for finding out what's really going and informing others. They are gaining unprecedented access to all sorts of information about governments, corporations and other organizations in society.

Over the next few weeks, I will post a series of articles around the theme of the power of collaboration. I hope to provoke discussion on rabble.ca.

The rapidly evolving social media has become integral to collaboration. For example, two years ago, many questioned just how important social media could be in helping activists achieve social change. Writer Malcolm Gladwell wrote a thoughtful essay in The New Yorker entitled “Small Change: Why the Revolution Won’t be Tweeted.” He argued that social networks only create weak ties between people, but that it’s strong ties and close relationships that bring about real social change.