12
street roots
June 24, 2011
Twitter’s
bitter
aftertaste
How cutting-edge technologies, past
a n d present, have shaped our political
landscape, fo r better or worse
BY JOE MARTIN
G U E S T W R IT E R
REUTERS/RAHEB H O M A V A N D I
cience and technology contribute to an of television that some pundits averred was
ever-widening array of devices and
certain to bring “teledemocracy” to the
gadgets that seep into society’s fabric
masses.
at a vertiginous rate. Innovative machinery A more sober assessment of television’s
and applications pour profusely from a
impact was provided by science fiction
technological horn of plenty with waves of
writer Ray Bradbury: “The television is that
new items and systems constantly
insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes
overtaking the previous hodgepodge of
a billion people to stone every night, staring
digital doodads that many are not yet used
fixedly, that Siren which Called and sang and
to. We are dazzled by the things we can do
promised so much and gave, after all, so
with our personal computers, cell phones
little.” Morozov states: “Technologies, it
and other shiny contraptions of our digital
seems, tend to overpromise and under
times. There are those who gush that we
deliver, at least on their initial promises.”
must surely be on the cusp of a new age of
Morozov examines Iran’s 2009 “Green
liberating possibilities.
Revolution.” In the wake of the re-election
Not so. fast, says Evgeny Morozov, in his
of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad,
provocative survey of cutting edge :
streets exploded in outrage. Accusations of
communication technologies and their social fraud sparked widespread protests. These
g
The Net Delusion:
The Dark Side of
Internet Freedom
By Evgeny
Morozov,
PublicAffairs,
Hardcover, 2011,
409 pages, $27.95
andpoImcaJimp'lications. There is an
^lsplaysw erehailed as “The Twitter
underside to the hype and hoopla that is
reckless to ignore. “Utopian accounts of ,,
technology’s liberating role in human ,
history rarely acknowledge the fact that it
was the discovery of quinine, which helped
to fight malaria, reducing the risk of
endemic tropical disease, that eliminated
one major barrier to colonialism, or that the
invention of printing helped to forge a
common Spanish identity and pushed the
Spaniards to colonize Latin America.”
The first modern technology to inspire
visions of a unified humanity sharing a
global village was the telegraph. It turned
out to be a nifty tool for imperialist designs.
The arrival of the airplane moved some to
predict that following the end of World War
.1, a “new period of human relations” was
about to dawn because air flight would
shrink our world and promote
understanding and peace between nations.
Radio became the next wonder to ignite?
the imagination. The brilliant inventor
Marconi was moved to speculate that “the
coming df the wireless era will make war
impossible, because it will make war
ridiculous.” Then there was the excitement
Revolution” due to the broad utilization of
novel devices and systems like Twitter,
Facebook and email that enabled Iranians to
harness and coordinate the political passion
shared by frustrated citizens.
Numerous western journalists and
pundits like Andrew Sullivan were
pontificating about the democratic boon
cutting edge technologies will bring to those
suffering under authoritarian regimes:
Technophiles assert cybertopia’s evolving
and tantalizing technologies are inevitably
democratic in their application. Morozov
provides a timely cautionary argument that
is a refreshing counterpoint to shallow
techno-triumphalism too frequently offered
as profound analysis.
At the height of the Green-Twitter
Revolution, Morozov notes a senior official
with the U.S. State Department sent Twitter
executives an email containing a request to
postpone planned maintenance of the
Twitter site so not to hinder the
mobilization of Iran’s angry citizens. The
New York Times stated this email was
“recognition by the United States
government that an Internet blogging
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service that did not exist four years ago has
the potential to change history in an ancient
Islamic country.”
However, drastic change never came.
Eventually protests stopped. In fact
Ahmedinejad’s government quickly cracked
down on its opponents, often taking the'
very technologies celebrated as harbingers
of liberation and using them to trace, catch
and imprison people. Other nations like
China observed events in Iran and
proactively imposed stricter controls on
potentially disruptive media. Morozov
argues that instead of waves of democracy
toppling uptight and despotic regimes we
got “globalization at its w orst”
As I finished Morozov’s book, I pondered
Customers use
computers at an
internet cafe in
Tehran M ay 9,
2011. Websites
such as Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube
and countless
others were banned
shortly after the
re-election o f Iran's
President
M ahmoud
Ahmadinejad and
the huge street
protests that
followed.
recent events in Egypt and how
communication technologies contributed tq
the political resistance resulting in the
abdication of longtime president Hozni
Mubarak. Whether Mubarak’s departure will
usher in an era of genuine democracy in
that country remains to be seen.
And I thought of the horrific experience
endured by “60 Minutes” reporter Lara
Logan, who was brutalized and gang raped
in Cairo’s Tahrir Square while reporting on
the frenzied celebrations on the night of
Feb. 11. Tom away from her film crew,
interpreter and bodyguard, Logan was
stripped of her clothing and nearly killed in
the course of the assault. She said, “When
my clothes gave Way, I remember looking up
and seeing them taking pictures with their
cell phones, the flashes qf their cell phone
cameras.”
A woman beatefi, dazed and violated
while men surrounding her with
Sophisticated cell phones record the event.
There is no democracy and surely no
liberation in that horrifying image.
Originally published by Real Change News,'
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