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Along the lines of what American 2.0 can look like I can pass on one of the indicators that appear to offer a positive measure.
The link has to do with something called The Dictators Dilemma.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertations/RGSD127/sec2.html#fnB4
Google was not helping me find that link, and the chart that was originally attached to that web page.
Here is the chart:
I had saved that on my own web forum:
http://www.power-independence.com/view_topic.php?id=398&forum_id=4&page=11
A quote from the link may offer some positive data:
The technology of communication has changed and with it, corresponding political biases have shifted. In a broader historical context, advancements in the means of communication have profoundly influenced characteristics within and interactions between societies since the time when language was invented. Writing created permanence; the printing press widened distribution; the telegraph conquered distance; the telephone facilitated interactivity; and television mastered visual images. Now, asynchronous electronic telecommunication networks likewise represent another fundamental, substantial, and discontinuous improvement in the ability to communicate. Modern communication innovations differ from previous technologies in fundamental ways that relatively favor sovereign individuals over sovereign governments. (Wriston, 1993). "If we look for historical precedents for this diffusion of power through information away from the elites, the Renaissance comes to mind" (Builder, 1993: 159).
The graphic in Figure 2.1 is helpful in understanding how the dictator's dilemma is a result of advances in communication technologies. The orthogonal axes represent fundamental characteristics of all communications media: Who is able to communicate with whom? Broadcast media, like television, reach large audiences but the ability to broadcast is greatly limited by economic, political and technological constraints. Interactive media, like telephones, can approach universal access, but the number of recipients per message is rarely more than one. Influence increases as more people get the word and autonomy increases with the percentage of the society that can originate and share its own ideas. The dictator's task, to maximize influence while limiting autonomy, used to be easier when technological improvements in telecommunications moved generally in linear paths along the horizontal or vertical axes. The optimal position, from the dictator's perspective, would be in the bottom right-hand corner where everybody receives all of the leader's dictates and none from anyone else. The Jeffersonian democratic ideal resides toward the top right-hand corner where ideas compete in a marketplace comprising many message originators and many recipients. "We the people" implies a public that can communicate with itself. This diagram shares important similarities with the schema proposed by Robert Dahl in his theory of polyarchies. Dahl's concept of "inclusive hegemonies" exists in the bottom right-hand corner and "polyarchies" in the top right-hand corner.[5]
If that does not offer some measure of positive perspective, the following may, as this source had gone through hell, as we all do, relatively speaking, and onto the other side the source offers a usable perspective.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/nobel-lit1970.htm
We will be told: What can literature do against the pitiless onslaught of naked violence? Let us not forget that violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with LYING. Between them there is the closest, the most profound and natural bond: nothing screens violence except lies, and the only way lies can hold out is by violence. Whoever has once announced violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose lying as his PRINCIPLE. At birth, violence behaves openly and even proudly. But as soon as it becomes stronger and firmly established, it senses the thinning of the air around it and cannot go on without befogging itself in lies, coating itself with lying's sugary oratory. It does not always or necessarily go straight for the gullet; usually it demands of its victims only allegiance to the lie, only complicity in the lie.
The simple act of an ordinary courageous man is not to take part, not to support lies! Let that come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me. Writers and artists can do more: they can VANQUISH LIES! In the struggle against lies, art has always won and always will. Conspicuously, incontestably for everyone. Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art.
Once lies have been dispelled, the repulsive nakedness of violence will be exposed--and hollow violence will collapse.
That, my friends, is why I think we can help the world in its red-hot hour: not by the nay-saying of having no armaments, not by abandoning oneself to the carefree life, but by going into battle!