Does Facebook Liberate Society?
WaPo has a piece commenting on the unorthodox nature of Herman Cain's campaign. A comment from Phill Musser in the article struck me:
“If Facebook could be used to topple the Egyptian government, then perhaps Herman Cain can use it to win Iowa,” said Phil Musser, a Republican strategist who most recently worked for the short-lived presidential bid of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.
Did Facebook really serve as the tool to topple the government in Egypt, and can social networking sites become the means of democratic election? The organizers of the uprisings across the middle east this past spring certainly give Facebook credit. I was reminded of a comment by Wael Ghonim, an organizer in Egypt, when he commented:
"We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I've always said that if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet."
Does technology liberate society? Certainly it seems to increase the power of the individual voice. It makes free speech free, or at least lowers marginal costs for communicating to thousands. But the argument that increasing the options available to an individual increases liberty assumes a very unconstrained definition of freedom. It can be increased through material wealth -- even Facebook and the "cloud" require massive humming rows of very material servers in some datacenter basement.
This is why President Obama's push to make high speed internet a federally developed public utility makes sense to a progressive mind: It increases options; it increases freedom; it liberates the lower-classes.
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Dec '10
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
On the question of whether technology liberates society, I would say in and of itself no. Like the money it cost to purchase, it is only a tool and can be as easily used for good as evil.
Truth, and the information that conveys it are what really lead to freedom. The OWS protests are a prefect example. Undoubtedly the OWS participants deftly use technology to spread their message, but instead of freeing themselves from a supposedly oppressive faction of society, they have merely enslaved themselves to their own feelings of resentment.
I might also vary on your summation about Obama's push to make the internet into a utility. While it wears a thin veneer of increased liberty and is sold on that premise, it is far more about control. Attack Watch was an almost humorous attempt to control the internet, or the messages on it and the people who spread them. It is a feat which would be hard to accomplish unless you owned and controlled the means by which the information was conveyed. In my estimation, it's basically public ownership of the airwaves all over again.
Edited on October 18, 2011 at 4:57amJul '11
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
I consider all of these social networks to be excuses for people that do not know how to go breathe fresh air. Oh wait, what am I doing now, I'm a hypocrite.
K GTG BYE ....LOL & OMG
Aug '10
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
No, no, a thousand times no. Technology only amplifies the will and reach of humanity. And technology is never distributed evenly; imbalances will reinforce one side's strength.
Give tech to an oppressor, he will use it to oppress. Give it to a revolutionary, he will use it to fight the oppressor. Give it to a materialistic consumer society, and it will create Facebook to sell virtual farm goods to each other, while watching the oppressor and the revolutionary fight it out in the real world via Youtube.
(Give tech to a technocratic politician, and he gets delusions of control. God save us from economists with a messiah complex and a spreadsheet!)
If I had a way to punch people through the Internet, I would use it to clobber everyone who crowed that changing Twitter profile colors "showed solidarity" with the brutally crushed Iranian Green Revolution, or that adding a Like to a Facebook page supports Arab Spring protesters.
Jul '11
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
BlueAnt
Funny how these slacktivists with a mouse button feel like they really made a big contribution by pressing that mouse button.
Nov '10
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
Technology (modern natural science) teaches power, not wisdom. "Good" is not a scientific term. This is precisely what atheists-for-the-sake-of-science such as Christopher Hitchens cannot get through their craniums. Power and wisdom are likely very different things. And freedom, properly understood, is simply the obverse of virtue or morality. In other words, it's the obverse of finitude, or of limitations -- the core meaning of Flagg Taylor's recent excellent post.
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
Not necessarily. Technology that improves information flow goes both ways. Without effective and rapid long distance communication, totalitarianism is hard. When the government finds out about things quickly, people can get away with expecting them to fix things. Welfare states and police states both require effective communication, so technology that improves communication can work against the people as well.
Dec '10
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
Liberation?
No.
The Arab Spring was carefully planned and instigated by our State Department, including bringing over activists from Egypt (and elsewhere), to the United States, and training them in internet activism; one participant expressed that they should be able to bring down Mubarak in 2011. The server I might link to, to document that is down, right now, but the information is in the public domain, not on some obscure website. American tax dollars paid to bring them over and teach them how to use Facebook. Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dorhn, and Jodie Evans went over to Egypt, last year, to get things moving. Again, easy facts for you to check for yourself. How do you think those people were allowed into Egypt? You think Mubarak allowed them in of his own good will, or his arm got twisted?
Liberation, or manipulation by a crass and demonic left, taking advantage of gullible people?
Same with OWS; this has been planned for years and only looks feckless, as the puppeteers try to hide, in the background.
OWS is mostly SEIU and ACORN, with just the usual dupes, pushed out front.
Is that liberation?
Facebook, like a firearm, is merely a tool.
Oct '10
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
Technology does help free society. Imagine if China has facebook with no restrictions and filters. That's their worst nightmare.
Mar '11
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
No. Regardless of how many times this nonsense is repeated it remains adolescent babble. What occured in Egypt was a military coup, STRATFOR has the only analysis I've come across that is not vacuous nonsense:
...Mubarak’s insistence on Gamal and his unwillingness to step down created a crisis for the regime. The military feared the regime could not survive Mubarak’s ambitions.
This is the key point to understand. There is a critical distinction between the regime and Hosni Mubarak. The regime consisted — and consists — of complex institutions centered on the military but also including the civilian bureaucracy controlled by the military. Hosni Mubarak was the leader of the regime, successor to Nasser and Sadat, who over time came to distinguish his interests from those of the regime. He was increasingly seen as a threat to the regime, and the regime turned on him.
...the military welcomed the demonstrations, since they created a crisis that put the question of Mubarak’s future on the table. They gave the military an opportunity to save the regime and preserve its own interests.
Aug '10
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
Imagine China with the ability to monitor every Internet search, filter individual words from websites, and bully Google right out of the country.
It's an authoritarian regime's greatest dream: a non-physical information flow that can be efficiently monitored and throttled from a centralized bureaucracy. It removes the need to search every house in the country for contraband documents, or to expand its police force to physically monitor dissidents.
Oh wait... that already happened. Facebook is blocked and Google is gone (but Ricochet is not!). Et tu, technology?
Oct '10
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
so
BlueAnt
Imagine China with the ability to monitor every Internet search, filter individual words from websites, and bully Google right out of the country.
It's an authoritarian regime's greatest dream: a non-physical information flow that can be efficiently monitored and throttled from a centralized bureaucracy. It removes the need to search every house in the country for contraband documents, or to expand its police force to physically monitor dissidents.
Oh wait... that already happened. Facebook is blocked and Google is gone (but Ricochet is not!). Et tu, technology? · Oct 19 at 10:03am
so what if they can monitor? once momentum for a revolution gets going, it can be difficult to contain (at least look at how far it got in iran 2009 at its peak). even tiananmen square tactics might not work this time around.
Edited on October 20, 2011 at 7:22amNov '10
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
Communication technology is sort of orthogonal to freedom; it can be used both to increase it or decrease it. Certainly improvements played a huge role in the Reformation; in France it seems that each time they lifted press censorship between the late 1700's and the late 1800's they got a revolution. Broadsheets played a big role in the War of Independence. On the other hand, Hitler mastered the media innovations of the time very quickly - combined with his use innovative use of the airplane for campaigning, he and his party were able to establish themselves in a position to seize power. FDR benefitted greatly from the Radio Act of 1927, and the Federal Communications Act of 1934, which essentially shut down many independent stations in favour big corporate ones, who in turn supported big government. That legacy lives on, especially in broadcast TV. Governments are usually at a disadvantage because their structure usually makes their responsiveness unwieldy (which is why they aim for control).
The internet is no different.
Jan '11
Re: Does Facebook Liberate Society?
Rather than the internet as the keystone to liberation, you might want to consider the somewhat older concepts of private property and the right of the people to own firearms.
They have a better pedigree.