Day: June 16, 2009

The Iranian Election, Twitter, and Popular Movements

Carl Setzer

I’ve spent part of the morning following the Twitter dialog (Twitterlog?) about the Iranian elections and the ensuing protests (I’m following two threads: #Iranelection and #Tehran. Even with the media black-out, these postings are coming with amazing speed. It, literally, is impossible to keep up. Hundreds of posts per minute, perhaps thousands. With this, certainly, will be a huge amount of bad information, as well as deliberate mis-information. However, within this will be solid pieces of truth. Powerful, indeed. And here lies how this medium has changed the world. A totalitarian regime can’t suppress this much information. Thousands of voices, reaching out instantly. Pretty much a game of whack-a-mole on the government’s end. Sadly, those “moles” who get whacked with get it hard, I’m certain.

Besides Twitter, Flickr has an amazing stream of images, YouTube has videos, Digg is going crazy…so much, so very fast. Opposition now has a powerful, global tool. That, and a willingness to use it. The world has changed, indeed.

Web 2.0 or Me vs. We

Carl Setzer4 Comments

One of my chums posted a very thoughtful piece about the Web 2.0 and how it is resulting in more ego-centrism (give the Angry African a read here). Thoughtful thoughts should beget thoughtful thoughts, don’t you think? Well, here are mine (for what they’re worth…money back if not delighted).

One great danger of Web 2.0 comes from our ever demanding ego. The temptation is great to simply feed it by tracking our followers on Twitter, reviewing our blog stats, ever checking our Technorati ratings, ad nauseum. Also, the temptation to simply post things to generate more readers is challenging. I see this thinking related to the adolescent mind. The form of thinking that only sees the group in terms of me. Group acceptance is paramount, even though it stems from a desire (or so claimed, at least) for independence.

Perhaps the issue, really, stems from the fact that the web, like all societal institutions, is accessible to people regardless of the state of maturity. Thus, we’re stuck with people focusing more on the numbers of interactions than on the quality. The members of our society are evolving at different rates, starting at different times. Web 2.0 loves them all.

The Angry African also brings up poverty, and the resulting lack of access. My sincerest hope is that Moore’s law combining with the economies of scale will bring these tools to more and more people globally. However, until that time, we are left with hoping their voices are heard. Most of that comes from those who “care”. Sadly, many of those are drowning in paternalism. Finding ways to ensure the voices of the impoverished and exploited are heard in a genuine way is deeply challenging.

For me, the medium summed up as tech, offers the world so very much. Perhaps I’m too Pollyannaish.