The Internet: For Better or for Worse

Steve Coll- The Internet: For Better or for Worse (April 7, 2011)

Hey guys, sorry this is late...

With the invention and subsequent adoption of the internet, a new wave of social activism has been born. Published in The New York Review of Books in April of 2011, “The Internet: For Better or for Worse” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll discusses the internet and the way it acts as a way of communication between its users. In comparison to previous communications such as the telegraph, radio, and television, does the internet favor its users over centralized authorities? What does this technology do to advance free speech and assembly?

Coll gives an example of activism right away by mentioning Wael Ghonim of Dubai. Ghonim, using Facebook, organized a protest against the Egyptian police and the unrightful death of twenty-eight year old Khaled Said. The campaign was successful, attracting over 470,000 people online in Egypt. Ghonim later went on to be a leader in the Egyptian Revolution against Hosni Mubarak saying, “if you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet.” Written two months after the resignation of Mubarak, Coll’s article mentions the Arab Spring movements and the role of “Internet freedom” as an American foreign policy.

Some authors such as Evgeny Morozov in The Net Delusion argue that the Internet is not a force for liberation, saying that there is “a naive belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication” and that social media in overestimated as a tool for political liberation. Morosov, hailing from the repressive government regime of Belarus, claims that the strategy of promoting democracy on the internet only creates a “significant push back from the governments [they] sought to challenge.” Morosov mentions the failed Green Movement uprising in 2009 in Iran as another example of social media’s failing. In The Net Delusion, an over-arching theme is the grasp of authoritarians on digital spaces. This ranges from the use of Facebook to enhance surveillance to the rise of Hugo Chavez as a tweeter.

In the United States, Hillary Clinton and her advisors want to promote “the freedom to connect” saying that “connection technologies are going to transform the world alone.” And that is true with today’s society; the freedom to connect is important. The internet is the public square of this generation. Facebook is our Tiananmen. Twitter is our Times. Ultimately, it is important to keep an open internet, to preserve virtual public spaces, and to keep it open for the individual. Yet Wu, the author of The Master Switch, says that “the twenty-first century world of information will look, as much as possible, like that of the twentieth century, except that the screens that consumers are glued to will be easier to carry.” Wu is right. The age of the revolution has gone mobile and social. Gone is the age of riots in the square. Welcome to the time of KONY 2012. Welcome to the time of twitter trending topics. Welcome to the time of the internet revolution.