The Digital Revolution

(A protester in Egypt. Photo by Sarah Carr.)

The internet is the most truly democratic institution man has ever created. The main problem with governments that suppress political opposition  within their country (non-democratic institutions) is that the government  never has an understanding of how deep or widespread public support for a political opposition is. This is often a central reason revolutions are successful, this is often why repressive regimes appear so flat footed and caught off guard moments before they fall. The government finds it wasn't able to appreciate how many people were truly unhappy at any given time because it always dedicated itself to making any small amount of political disturbance disappear. The threat of the opposition is of course an old feature of any political reality, but the internet is a rather new feature of all political reality and it's only making life much more difficult for oppressive regimes. The democratic nature of the internet has always posed a major threat to autocratic, secretive, and oppressive regimes, but as a young generation across the globe comes into its own armed with social media, many world leaders now have reason to seriously worry. The internet and social media are forcing the will of the people upon many unsuspecting figures in the world. That is to say the internet is starting to bring down governments and there is nothing anyone can do…except watch as it all unfolds 140 characters at a time on Twitter.

In the summer of 2009 protest erupted across Iran after the government manipulated the results of the presidential elections. While the leadership was able to retain power it served as a wake-up call to the government of Iran. A few weeks ago a man set himself on fire in front of a government building in Tunisia, which was followed by mass protest and resulted in the government of Tunisia falling and it's leader fleeing the country. A few days ago Egyptians—drawing encouragement from the events in neighboring Tunisia—began pouring into the streets of Cairo demanding that the 30 year rule of their president, Hosni Mubarak, come to an end. As of yesterday and today people in Yemen, inspired by the recent events in both Tunisia and Egypt, have taken to the streets and began protest and demands for political change as well. The connective tissue between all of these events is not only their location, the Middle East, but the role the internet has played. In each of these countries the government has always monitored, censored, and blocked, internet access particularly to media and social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube out of fear they could be used to support the activities of a political opposition. In all of these instances the fear of the internet for those reasons was well founded, because that's exactly what has happened.   
 
The central lesson in all of this however is not for oppressive regimes to have well founded fears in the power of the internet and technology. The central lesson is the futility in attempting to censor or restrict the public from the information, ideas, and communication that's occurring on the internet. The internet has/is fundamentally changing society, flattening prior systems of control, power, and hierarchy, and widening the scope of information and communication. Basically, no one controls the internet or the information/communication within it and all attempts to block the public from any form of expression/information/communication (both good and bad) that exist on the world wide web are proven to be futile. Iran found itself struggling to shutdown Twitter amid the weeks of protest; Tunisia's government resorted to phishing for Facebook passwords days before the government fell, in attempts to find those organizing protest online; Egypt has tried shutting down cell service, Twitter, and Youtube, in similar attempts. None. Of. It. Is. Working. When the force of the completely democratic and free nature of the virtual world confronts the complex hierarchy of the real world, the virtual world and freedom win.  It is far too soon to know what the outcome of these various events will be in the near future, but the outcome over the long term seems obvious to anyone paying attention.  


Update:  Hours after I wrote this the government of Egypt, in a move unprecedented in the modern world, shut internet and cellphone service down across the entire country sending Egypt into digital darkness.  No country has ever taken itself off the grid so completely before.  The government's hope was that the measure would dampen the ability of protest to organize today, Friday.  It didn't.  If anything the situation has escalated quicker than many anticipated.  Further possible proof of the complete futility of such actions.