While Barack Obama is moving to revitalize the Freedom of Information Act, ironically, he and his staff cannot send text messages on BlackBerrys. Transparency is the new way, but still evolving.

On March 24, ThinkTech is doing a four-panel interactive program called "State of the Web 2009" with Pacific New Media, TechHui, StarrTech and the Hawaii Venture Capital Association. The first panel will cover the complexities of the new transparency and set the stage for the others.

Hawai'i's hip techies will know about the tools of the new transparency — blogs, IM, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. The rest of us may not have caught up with them yet. This panel will help, but what is the road map? Here are some ideas.

1. POROUS MEMBRANE

The world is run by entities, structures of people, including governments, businesses and other groups of every kind. Historically, these entities have been encapsulated, with hard shells, secret places and big-shot bonuses unknown to the public.

The Web has changed this. It's made these entities more porous, more permeable. People on the inside can post freely to the outside, and vice versa. Those who have barricaded things before now find it more difficult to do so.

We have entered the age of transparency. It leads us to enlightened decisions and accountability. It changes the way our entities work. It shifts the power and redraws the chart to the point where formal management may no longer be running the show. Disruptive messages can flow in and out. We know things are changing, but we need to know how.

2. NEW BANDWIDTH

The cost of entry used to involve hosting and programming costs. You can build a Web site for a lot less now, but building Web sites is no longer the frontier. The tools of the new transparency, all far more powerful, are mostly free. The cost to send your meme worldwide is nothing. That allows more people to get involved, but it spreads rumors more easily, too, like saying Obama is a Muslim.

The sheer number of people you can reach makes it possible to transform history. This bandwidth not only expands the market, it is the medium for the market. If the Web helped scare the market down, it can help raise it up. If the market allows fraud, the new transparency can expose it. With this transparency, the Web will be the center of the world's economy.

This year, we are in a global transition. The Web is at work in getting us to the other side, and you can bet there will be huge opportunities for those who are savvy about it. The next chapter will be phoenix-like, and the Web-fittest will survive and prosper. Will that be you? Will it be Hawai'i? We need to put this on the table.

3. VIRAL MECHANISMS

On her blog, a New York mother asked people to help her find a kidney for her daughter. The post prompted 189 comments and spurred readers to action. The post went out to 418 followers on Twitter (5.5 million users) who spread the call. A donor match was quickly found. See http://www.thedomesticdiva.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/its-ok-to-laugh. This is more than a heart-warming story, it's a new way to find kidneys.

Motrin published an ad about "baby wearing" — carrying children in a sling. Online moms were offended. The word went out on Twitter and then YouTube. See www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhR-y1N6R8Q. The bloggers saw the tweets. They called for a boycott and asked readers to alert the press. It worked. Motrin pulled the ad and roundly apologized. The power of the Web again revealed.

But suppose a person twittering about Motrin was a guy posing as a mom? Would that have changed things? How can we tell whether these online conversations come from pranksters or people playing devil's advocate? Is there really transparency in a cloud of people criticizing a company? How do we know they aren't employees or competitors? We have to rely on transparency to protect transparency's own reputation.

4. FINDING CREDIBILITY

The transparent Web will tell you who's popular and who's credible. Over time, you'll discover the thought leaders of your community, and they will give you more accurate news and better advice. You don't have to know them, and you may never know their real names.

Credibility on the Web is based on old values — branding, longevity, trust and reputation, as enhanced by authorities and validation. It works faster because of reverberation — where a person's credibility bounces off others. This results in a Web-based consensus among random strangers judging the person only in that limited context.

Individuals responding in comments are different from writers with an established brand. They can get credibility through sustained involvement and user names, or a rating system, but many news outlets don't use those tools. In the resulting free-for-all, some organizations even have teams of paid commenters. Some online commentators choose anonymity. Others say visibility helps. How do they decide whether to come out? There are many good reasons to study how this works.

5. AVOIDING OVERLOAD

Multitask all you want, but you still have only so much time. You can't spend your whole life posting everything you do or verifying everything you read. You can't surrender everything for transparency — you'll dissolve into the chorus and lose your privacy or individualism. You've got to be more than your Facebook profile.

People can use the new transparency for nefarious purposes, too. They can spread false rumors and urban myths that can destroy lives and ruin reputations. My uncle says half of everything you read in the paper is false. The problem is figuring out which half.

The price of transparency is eternal vigilance. When the Twitter community started relaying tweets regarding the movements of the IDF in Gaza, the coverage was being streamed so quickly that the terrorists were using it. Panelist Dan Zelikman could follow the battle from his cell phone real time in Hawai'i. So could Hamas. CNN had nothing on them. The dangers of unintentional transparency are obvious.

BRINGING IT HOME

The transparent Web is more than the sum of its parts — it has a life of its own. This panel — Bill Spencer, Mary Fastenau, Olin Lagon and Kara Imai — will have its hands full. We hope they will dig deep on these issues to bring the discussion home.

The other March 24 panels will deal with political marketing, e-commerce and social networking. Each is involved in web transparency and each is affected by that transparency. And, like it or not, so are you. Time to rearrange your core competencies?

Jay Fidell is a business lawyer practicing in Honolulu. He has followed tech and tech policy closely and is a founder of ThinkTech Hawaii. Check out his blog at www.HonoluluAdvertiser.com/Blogs.