Idle Twatter
Jay Rosen has been making some fun of cyber-pragmatists, whose reminders that we know little about the link between social media and democratization movements apparently constitute a “genre” in which:
1.) Nameless fools are staking maximalist claims. 2.) No links we can use to check the context of those claims. 3.) The masses of deluded people make an appearance so they can be ridiculed. 4.) Bizarre ideas get refuted with a straight face. 5.) Spurious historicity. 6.) The really hard questions are skirted.
He must not have read Evgeny Morozov‘s new book Net Delusion, whose very first chapter names the fools, links to the content, and reframes the big question as not whether social media matters but rather which side it ultimately benefits in the balance of power between citizens and authoritarian states.
Aaron Bady has a much more nuanced set of thoughts. TechPresident‘s Nancy Scola has some additional words of wisdom on how to evaluate social media’s role in the latest wave of democratization:
Revolutions can start and more or less finish in 18 days these days, and the debates they’re sparking on foreign affairs are happening at a similar pace. What technology means for the relationship between the citizen and the state is only going to become more important, and along with it the discussion of what on-looking governments like that of the United States should do in the mix. To wit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is giving at talk tomorrow at George Washington University on the topic of “Internet Rights and Wrongs: Choices and Challenges In A Networked World,” a followup to her big “Internet freedom” speech last January that really kicked off domestic debate on the topic. This is stuff too important to ignore.
If one only considers the time from the first to the final riot
“Revolutions can start and more or less finish in 18 days these days”
This is really, really an absurd thing to say, and so far as I’m concerned, only stands as one more piece of evidence about how impoverished our political thought and theoretical language have become.
You use the expression “citizens” opposed to the government. I’d like to note that even the most popular revolution is caused by an active minority.
The Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions are middle-class revolutions. The people demonstrating use social media and have a decent education. It’s easy for us to respect them and to cheer at them.
Nonetheless, these people are not the whole nation. They may be the most enlightened part. However, in a true democracy, even the most uneducated hillbilly has the same equal vote as a college professor. And they might as well be ardent supporters of the previous government.
Good point. Let’s have some elections and find out.
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I think the larger forest issues are being missed in this discussion about the trees.
The pace of human history is quickening. The original Dark Ages lasted about 400 years, 5th-9th centuries CE. I would submit that the latest Dark Ages lasted only 40 years, 1910-1950 during which time the efficiencies of human progress were diverted primarily to annihilation of armies and the peoples of a scale never before thought possible, until it ended with the mass extinction of the race being possible within hours. Which brought people to their, more or less, senses.
People have overthrown their governments before and will do so again in the future. Social networking is a tool, like most others, that allows people to work smarter, faster, more effectively. Like movable type, trains, and electric light have in the past.
The question really is whether computing networking is enabling human networking at such a pace and in such a way as to create a new balance of power between the state and the collection of individuals within it.
Personally, I think not. This may be a period where the skills of the people to use a technology are ahead of the elites to respond effectively in controlling it. And that’s good, it aids the cause of human progress, generally, but thinking it’s on par with say, the printing press, is generational hubris.
Revolutions have been televised for 60 years now. The telephone has networked masses of people for over 100 years. The Federalist Papers were distributed through transportation networks devoid of cars, trucks, trains, or even steam fir boats.People have gathered in public squares for several millennia now.
I’m thinking that the current rapture about social networking fits in with the phenomenon that every generation seems to think they have discovered sex in a unique way.
Uh, no.
The illusion of freedom that the internet provides makes it botha potentially brilliant tool for achieving freedom and an awesome way for authoritarian states to maintain a cage with less visible walls. That said social networking may speed the level on connectivity necessary to achieve true revolutionary change (though you also run the risk of Iran ’10 type scenario’s where both the outside public and the younger more net savvy citizen’s of a particular nation-state think that a revolution/transition is on the way when its really not- the revolutionary version of the Kael “No one I know voted for Nixon” phenomenon.
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Internets: do not believe the hype.