The
publication Foreign
Policy runs
a regular feature entitled “Think Again” in which some or
another contributor addresses an issue he deems to be
misunderstood by otherwise knowledgeable people. Each section
therein deals with some assertion that the author seeks to
correct or clarify; the intent is to bring a skeptical eye to
widely-held views on matters of global significance, which is
a fine thing to attempt when the writer in question is a
competent essayist and thinker rather than some other, lesser
thing.
In the May/June issue, FP contributing editor Evgeny
Morozov takes to “Think Again” in an effort to bring clarity
to the general subject of the Internet as it pertains to
freedom and representative government. "The Internet has been
a Force for Good,” reads the first assertion to be addressed.
The answer, Morozov says, is “No," and he begins to explain
why the answer is "No" and not "Yes" or "I don't know" by
reminding us of the hopes expressed by web enthusiasts back in
the early days of connectivity, occasionally in their own
words. "The Internet was lauded as the ultimate tool to foster
tolerance, destroy nationalism, and transform the planet into
one great wired global village," he reminds us.
Something
seems to have gone awry, though, and fifteen years later
tolerance remains unfostered, nationalism is still in
existence, and our planet is only a wired global village to
the extent that it can be compared to such a thing. Morozov
does cite one actual claim made long ago by the pro-internet
crowd, here quoting the 1994 manifesto "A Magna Carta for the
Knowledge Age", which, as he notes, promised the advent of
"electronic neighborhoods bound together not by geography but
by shared interests." This is an odd claim to cite as
representative of unfulfilled hopes insomuch as that it
appears to have been fulfilled if we take the metaphor
"electronic neighborhoods" to mean what it obviously means and
the clause "bound together not by geography but by shared
interests" to mean what it even more obviously means, and then
observe that we do indeed now have such things in the form of
online communities made up of people "bound together not by
geography but by shared interests," including blogs such as
Daily Kos, user-driven discussion sites such as Reddit, and
thousands of other such things. If Morozov has a different
definition in mind, he has kept it secret from us.
Incidentally,
this marks one of the two occasions in the entire article on
which Morozov bothers to quote any of the assertions he
ascribes to his opponents, and on neither occasion are we
treated to anything so bulky as an entire sentence, but then
print magazines are subject to space constraints. Limited by
his medium, Morozov is forced to continue here by merely
summarizing an assertion by Nicholas Negroponte, who
"dramatically predicted in 1997 that the Internet would
shatter borders between nations and usher in a new era of
world peace" or at any rate stated something approximate to
that.
Whatever
Negroponte said in 1997, it was apparently wrong. “The
Internet as we know it has now been around for two decades,”
Morozov reminds us, “and it has certainly been
transformative... But just as earlier generations were
disappointed to see that neither the telegraph nor the radio
delivered on the world-changing promises made by their most
ardent cheerleaders, we haven't seen an Internet-powered rise
in global peace, love, and liberty." I wouldn't know how to
measure the degree of global love, much less to what extent
one should attribute any change in such a thing to the
Internet. This puts me at a disadvantage when dealing with
Morozov, who seems to have had a head start on this, and so I
will concede the point, even more readily so since he hammers
it home by noting that the Internet has facilitated "the
increased global commerce in protected species.” Meanwhile, a
group of Serbians have been "turning to Facebook to organize
against gay rights" while a group of Saudi Arabians are
supposed to be setting up some sort of online version of their
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice squad. All in
all, "Many of the transnational networks fostered by the
Internet arguably worsen - rather than improve - the world as
we know it." Why this necessarily leads to the conclusion that
the Internet has not been a force for good is left
unaddressed, but there is, as I pointed out, a full-page
picture of a hand holding a mouse on the facing
page.
Having accomplished whatever it is that just
happened, Morozov moves on to address more specific assertions
such as, “Twitter Will Undermine Dictators." This, it turns
out, is “Wrong.” “Tweets don’t overthrow governments; people
do," Morozov begins, adding that social network sites have
proven “both helpful and harmful to activists operating from
inside authoritarian regimes." Again, one expects to see
Morozov at least attempt to make the case that they have been
more harmful than helpful, but he does not even seem to
consider this to be a productive line of inquiry; instead, he
is busy forgetting what it is that he had set out to prove -
that it is "Wrong" to assert that "Twitter Will Undermine
Dictators" - and has instead apparently just decided to make
the case that Twitter has not managed to actually overthrow
any dictators after a few years of existence. "Neither the
Iranian nor the Burmese regime has crumbled under the pressure
of pixelated photos of human rights abuses circulated on
social networking sites,” he points out.
Not
only has Twitter failed to take down two regimes, but one of
those regimes has attempted to use the service for its own
ends. "Indeed, the Iranian authorities have been as eager to
take advantage of the Internet as their green-clad opponents.
After last year's protests in Tehran, Iranian authorities
launched a website that publishes photos from the protests,
urging the public to identify the unruly protestors by name."
We are not told how effective this turned out to be or why
this necessarily cancels out the effectiveness of Twitter in
organizing the protests to begin with or how the fact that
dictators use websites shows that they are not being
undermined by the use of Twitter. The fellow’s talent is being
wasted in socio-political commentary when he could be writing
mysteries.
“Take
the favorite poster child of digital utopians,” Morozov
continues, citing a random example to which some digital
utopians may occasionally refer. “In early 2008 a Facebook
group started by a 33-year-old Columbian engineer culminated
in massive protests, with up to 2 million people marching in
Bogota’s streets to demonstrate against the brutality of
Marxist FARC rebels. (A New
York Times
article about the protests gushed: ‘Facebook has helped bring
public protest to Colombia, a country with no real history of
mass demonstrations.’)” We might have been fooled into taking
this as a factual assessment of what was going on in Colombia
had the New
York Times
refrained from gushing it, which is a dishonest rhetorical
trick and we should be thankful to Morozov for pointing it out
to us. “However, when the very same ‘digital revolution’ last
September tried to organize a similar march against Venezuelan
leader Hugo Chavez, they floundered.” Facebook, then, cannot
always be used to effectively undermine dictators in
neighboring countries; pass it on.
“Internet enthusiasts
argue that the Web has made organizing easier,” Morozov
continues. “But this is only partially true,” which is to say
that it is only easier to the extent that it is easier.
“Taking full advantage of online organizing requires a
well-disciplined movement with clearly defined goals,
hierarchies, and operational procedures.” I would retort that
such things are necessary in order to take full advantage of
anything, and that there is nothing of which anyone has ever
taken full advantage, but that nonetheless these imperfect
entities do manage to accomplish things, and that, again,
Morozov was supposed to be showing that Twitter doesn’t
undermine dictators, not that it frees protester organizers
from the necessity of goals and procedures.
Our
correspondent next dismisses the myth that “Google Defends
Internet Freedom,” noting that the company does so “Only when
convenient.” I’m not aware of anyone who argues otherwise
other than Google’s public relations people, but at any rate
Morozov manages to shoot them down.
Next up on the chopping
block is the claim that “The Internet Makes Governments More
Accountable.” “Not necessarily,” Morozov retorts, noting that
“even when the most detailed data get released, it does not
always lead to reformed policies,” here citing an example of
an occasion on which the Internet did not make a particular
government more accountable and thereby refuting the argument
that “The Internet Always Makes Every Government More
Accountable in Every Way” which no one has ever made. True
accountability, he adds, “will require building healthy
democratic institutions and effective systems of checks and
balances. The Internet can help, but only to an extent.” That
all “help” is inherently a matter of “extent” and not entirety
does not prevent Morozov from throwing out this redundant
qualifier by virtue of its perceived use in minimizing the
fact that the Internet can indeed be of help in building or
reforming such institutions.
The
Internet and the claims made on its behalf merit skeptical
scrutiny. Skepticism, though, is more than contrarianism in
the face of a given claim, and it is wholly incompatible with
the style of argument such as we have seen above, being a
haphazard mixture of anecdotal evidence, selective amnesia,
non-sequiters, and loaded terminology. When publications
"gush" factual assertions and opponents are twice
characterized as "cheerleaders" in the space of a single
essay, it is not difficult to determine that the essayist in
question is seeking shortcuts to persuasion. And when an
essayist sets out to debunk an assertion as not only unproven,
but entirely wrong, and attempts to do this by the use of
anecdotal evidence that is weaker than the contrary anecdotal
evidence he seeks to nullify, and anyway shifts from attacking
the original assertion to attacking a broader assertion that
no one has made, and does all of these things several times in
various combinations, we ought not be surprised that the
essayist should have chosen to resort to such shortcuts in the
first place, and we may even be inclined to allow these things
as a handicap if we are the magnanimous sort, which we are
not.
The
Internet has not proven itself to be some surefire weapon
against tyranny or injustice or bad taste, but the same can be
said for the written word and, really, everything. But aside
from being wrong, arguments to the effect that the last decade
has shown the Internet to be a failure as a tool of political
change are almost beside the point if our intent is to better
understand what the Internet will look like in the future. Had
Morozov written a similar essay five years ago, he would have
been arguing against the revolutionary efficacy of a landscape
that is drastically different from what we see today - one in
which Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were as yet unknown. Five
years from now, new and entirely different tools will be in
use, and existing tools will be used in different ways. The
Internet will continue in its rapid evolution, the world in
turn will be tugged along in the wake of its influence, and
the means of human collaboration will continue to multiply
just as they have for the last decade and a half - which is to
say, orders of magnitude faster than ever before in human
history, and in an environment of fast-increasing social
complexity. We have barely received a taste of the phenomena
with which we and our very dictators will be confronted in the
coming years.