commandant cousteau · @myearshanglow
15th Jan 2011 from Twitlonger
@evgenymorozov Many thanks for your more nuanced discussion of all this. We need to get away from the simplistic logic of "for / against" Wiki, Titter, etc.
What this is is a tool for democratization of information, nothing more, nothing less. The fact that a democratization of information can become a threat to certain power structures says more about those power structures than about the tools themselves (of which telephones, email, twitter, printing press, etc. are all a part). As Assange said in his essay on "conspiracies",
"Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what's actually going on." This is the same philosophy as that expressed by Bradly Manning, by the way.
The fact that such a tool can also be harnessed by those in power to protect their own interests is a very weak argument against such technological advances. Any sufficiently complex system contains the possible seeds of its own undermining within itself (think of Godel's theorem, etc. as an analogy).
This is not a reason for dismissing fashionable new information technologies any more than it was for dismissing the printing press (printing government propaganda, etc). The correct question to ask is : who has ACCESS to such technologies?
It is also true that the more time people spend twitting, blogging, etc, the less time they spend out on the streets, where it ultimately matters. Corrupt regimes would have no problem with all of their citizens being aware of their corruption - if they knew that the citizens could not do anything to concretely undermine the regime. In the end, naked power and the mailed fist, if it is given free reign, will try to have the final word, this is obvious.
Final paradox - the only reason many of us are having this discussion for all to see is because of Twitter...