The Internet: strengthening dictatorships and empowering people since 1990 (Entry 10)

Ever since we started watching TED videos in class for COM 125, and I realized that there are TED talks about almost any topic, I've been coasting YouTube to find TED talks, and I found this one by Evgeny Morozov about how the Internet, instead of liberating people like how we've always observed it to, it can actually continue to enslave people in despotism.

The Internet only fully liberates people when despot governments do not know how to use it or underestimate its influence. However, that's hardly the case these days. There are entire sectors of governments dedicated to figuring out how to best use the Internet, and they've pretty much figured it out by now. Censoring dissident ideas doesn't work. Ideas spread like wildfire, so deleting one comment will not do anything about the other hundred that spring up because of it. Now, the way to go is to use the same channels used by dissident voices to spread pro-government sentiments, sometimes bordering on disinformation.

With this knowledge, our idea on what's true and what's not is now confounded. Of course, I'm sure none of us ever believed that everything on the Internet is true, but we used to have this notion that voices on the Internet that ran against an establishment are usually truthful, because they have a somewhat altruistic, truth-driven purpose for voicing these concerns online. Now we know that governments have the power and the smarts to "turn" dissident voices and to spread their own ideas in the same manner as dissident voices, so once again we have to rely on our own rational logic in order to figure out what's right for us and what is not.

Although Morozov paints a somewhat bleak picture of the current state of cyberliberalism, I think this could be a good thing for us and for anyone who feels the need for any and all governments to be subjected to checks and balances. This would teach us to not be overly reliant or trusting of these "dissident voices" and to exercise our own judgments. In other words, this teaches us to think for ourselves and discern for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, which is a skill we all need to develop. Mindlessly listening to dissident voices is no better than mindlessly listening to the government. There are good and bad people on both sides, and either side has the power to do social good and to become misguided in that effort. We have to discern for ourselves when right is right, wrong is wrong, and right becomes wrong. Only then can the people act as the safeguards and checks and balances to both governments and dissidents as we rightfully should.

This is, after all, as much our world and our Internet as it is anyone else's, and so we rightfully should have a say in it.