22 Mar 2011
In this new RSA Animate, author and journalist Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on ‘cyber-utopianism’ – the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.
You are welcome to link to, download, save or distribute our audio/video files electronically. Find out more about our open access licence.
Video file hosting and streaming is provided by GroovyGecko
Share
Mary Stephan - 28 Jul 2011 5:22pm
What's important though, is that revolution is not not not enough to constitute a democracy! In Egypt, the elections have been pushed back another two months--and the elections themselves aren't going to do much to "institute" democracy. What you need in a democracy is an active, interested public, and those are difficult to come by--maybe even more difficult to come by in a society full of folks listening to their own music, getting information about their own friends, and getting news that fits in with their worldviews. Information isn't enough--it's not, as Neil Postman once noted, information that causes divorce, or starvation, or war. What we need is empathy and intersubjectivity, and discussion. Is that happening online? I don't think it's happening nearly as much as it would need to in order to achieve the kind of optimism that people have about the web for democratic politics. Politics is not just about I want this and you want that. It's about seeing other perspectives and coming to a compromise. That doesn't happen without discussion. Please show me one instance where Twitter has helped such discussion. And then let me know how Egypt's doing in coming to a consensus about anything regarding their nation's political future. my blog on this topic is at ... googlingourselvestodeath.wordpress.com
jt - 15 May 2011 8:17am
Democracy - Shemocracy, the internet and IT technology empowers people with information and collaboration resources. Look at what's happening in the middle east right now - it's not about democracy it's about self determination.
David Dean - 26 Apr 2011 3:55am
Pornography is illegal under many authoritarian regimes, so when people download pornography, they are rebelling against existing power structure.
Steven - 19 Apr 2011 9:04pm
Many people have already said what I wanted to say, more or less. I don't really think this was a well made RSA video, Evgeny Morozov, I think, didn't do a very good job of backing up his ideas.
Kirby - 19 Apr 2011 8:20pm
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.
Rob - 19 Apr 2011 5:31pm
I disagree with this post too but for a slightly different reason: If the Saudi government (for example) gets people to look for videos and have them shut down...that is still a form of democracy.
johnny - 19 Apr 2011 3:02pm
I disagree with this video because it is full of contradictions and it is simply wrong. If the King of Thailand (I think he was mentioned), or any authoritarian regime has to ask people to find videos to be blocked then the earlier argument about leaders not being affraid of the internet is wrong. And then the author tries to claim that people don't go on the internet for political reasons. Ok, that's true for 95% of the population. But its not those people that will be starting the uprising, they will simply follow. Finally, if you actually took a second to think on a very basic level you would realize that the internet is an excellent tool for the spread of one key democratic value. FREE SPEECH! For this reason and this reason only, leaders in oppressive nations will deny people the right to share opinions which are damaging to the current regime. Which is exactly what happens in countries when the citizens are pissed off about their political leaders.
Adam - 19 Apr 2011 12:42pm
Sure, it's an alternative take, but it's also a very ignorant one. Why do tyrannical governments fear the Internet? It's not because they don't know how to use it, and certainly they DO use the Internet to their advantage. The reason is because, in a society where everyone has the Internet, and in which the people are oppressed, the sheer numbers of people voicing negative opinions about the government vastly outweighs those voicing positive opinions. Interconnectivity DOES promote democracy, because it gives the people a voice that they might not otherwise have had.
TARZAN - 18 Apr 2011 8:27pm
The internet should be open to the world
Luis Goncalves - 25 Mar 2011 9:22pm
any chance of separating the original and translated version. Or having subtitles in english for better understanding.
arcadius - 25 Mar 2011 4:27pm
RSA: please publish also text versions of your Animates to make translation to other languages easy.