RSA Animate The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?

RSAnimate www.theRSA.org Evgeny Morozov The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens? We have heard a lot of stories about the impact of the Internet in protest movements We have heard a lot about the information revolution and how it's transforming countries like: China, Iran, even many of the countries in the former Soviet Union and you know the assumption, so far has been that the Internet is basically a very good thing when it comes to promoting democracy So, many of these illusions were put together in the mid 90's by a thinker who ____ _____ called Cyberutopians People who really believe in the transformative power of the web to change societies and to change it for the better So, the most famous quote was that if social african blogging was around in the early 90's the genocide in Rwanda wouldn't have happened. Which it's now Which is now _____ This quote will illustrate the very naive view that people have back at the time So... Many of the people who still believe in this really think that Blogs are, more or less, what faxes and Xerox machines where in the late 80's where the great dissident movements in Poland and Eastern Europe really embraced this technology... So, essentially this argument is about Economics and Logistics The Internet and the Media had made it really cheap for people to put this content and enforce the Activists and the NGO's will inevitably use the technology in order to push for Reform & Change, right? and so, if you really want to sum up this view If you have enough connectivity and enough devices Democracy is almost inevitable and that explains what we have seen so many pushes to, you know: Get China On-Line, get Iran On-Line and get Russia On-Line and make sure that people have enough connectivity and make sure that people know what Blogging is and make sure that people know what Connectivity is and somehow, all in all, this would explain how exactly these people will use this tools to ask for more democracy and you know, colaborate together and do some more stuff, and you know, one of the main swich ____ have developed let's use "iPod Liberalism": It's believed that people who have iPods or any other sort of modern Western technology will also be very likely to support Western values and Western Democracy So, the assumption here is that if you give all Chinese, or Iranians or Russians enough iPods, or enough Laptops or enough fax-machines They will all, somehow, in their own aspire to Democratic Change, right? and of course this would make a fascinating title for a column by Thomas Friedman "Drop iPods, not bombs" ananın amı