You think that social media is about hooking up online? For these kids [in the Tunisian Revolution], it was a military tool to defend unarmed people from murderers.

In one sense, the Internet is like the discovery of the printing press, only it's very different. The printing press gave us access to recorded knowledge. The Internet gives us access, not just to knowledge, but to the intelligence contained in people's crania, access to the intelligence of people on a global basis.

Leaders of institutions everywhere have lost trust. The global economy is stalled and the world is deeply divided, too unequal, unstable and unsustainable.

There's a whole generation of young people who are faced with the so-called 'jobless recovery.' Necessity is the mother of invention. They are out there, all around the world, creating new companies.

Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.

To me, this is not an information age. It's an age of networked intelligence, it's an age of vast promise.

Leadership is happening, but it's not coming from the leaders of the old institutions. Everywhere you look, you see these extraordinary, sparkling new initiatives that are under way.