In this new RSAnimate adapted from a talk at the RSA, author and journalist Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' - the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely empancipatory role in global politics.
In this new RSAnimate adapted from a talk at the RSA, author and journalist Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' - the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely empancipatory role in global politics.
Join the discussion
Comments
Please login to post a comment or reply
Don't have an account? Click here to register.
Excellent, rmapped out the rich complexity of the subject very well.
What about political cyber-activists like tghe Situationists in 'The Cloud Connection'. Where cyber-activists are directly targeting corporate misinformation and government propaganda on the net. It's a great read. It's available at all ebook stores.
I agree with you on that, but, one thing to take notice is he did mention how oppressive institutions can and have taken down and taken aim at these cyber revolutionists who have taken action. One thing that mitigates the muffling of these activists,However, this would only apply to places where people's more basic needs are being adequately met; in a place where the government is threatening the people's rights to food, shelter and safety, the people are going to use the internet for obtaining these things before they use it for social time on Youtube and Facebook. They will use the internet to challenge their government, because their government is endangering their more basic needs.
I do not think he is saying it is useless in regards to uprising/revolution. He is merely demonstrating the double-edged sword. What he does not continue on to explore is the ways in which the organizations that promote change and democracy will morph, outwitting the corruption, as happened in Egypt when things were blocked. Natural selection will occur technologically.
I'm normally a big fan of RSA videos but this one just didn't do it for me. It is full of weak strawmen for the speaker to knock down ("The internet will just *somehow* *magically* get people to organize"), without even a discussion of the legitimate reasons that the internet can support a revolution (anonymous real-time broadcasting for the masses). I felt that the speaker didn't make a good-faith effort to understand or explain the opposing view, but simply dismissed it casually. Many people believe that the positive effect of anonymous real-time broadcasting is such a huge benefit that it outweighs the associated negatives. Please make an argument against this, not against "dropping ipods on the Middle East to support democracy". Give me a break.
So now that the speaker is going up against an argument that he fails to understand or even provide the basics of, he sets up arguments that could argue against many forms of communication ("Well people will be more distracted by entertainment than activist communications"). Clearly the invention of the personal video camera was terrible for activism and revolutions, because all the new entertainment kept people at home (but lets not talk about the clear legal benefits of a protester recording his actions and broadcasting them for the entire world to see). Yes, technology can be used for good and bad. This debate is well-worn and is not a suitable argument against technology. You need to show that the bad is sufficiently bad that it outweighs the good, and you did not do that in your extremely simplistic and deceiving video.
I appreciate the speaker's questioning of the norms and his general point that we need to think broadly about the implications of technology.
But, his examples pale in comparison to the benefits and potential that technology unlocks--particularly in the longterm.