When Evgeny Morozov writes about our “net delusion,” he’s not making a basketball reference or any notes about March Madness, though you can see where my brain has been recently. He’s talking about the cultural bias all of us have when it comes to the Internet. Whether we realize it or not, each one of us has preconceived notions about the Internet based on where we come from and what our prior knowledge and opinions are, especially when it comes to issues such as the Cold War, authoritarianism in general, and globalization.
That’s why Morozov says you have to look at the dissolution of the Soviet Union a bit more closely. Some people have a tendency to rewrite history and give more credit to things such as Radio Free Europe and Voice of America for toppling tyranny than they actually deserved. They should instead acknowledge the inherent problems the Soviet system had. But because of this, the implications for future promotion of democracy were remarkable – the prevailing thought was that “large doses of communication” and communication technologies would be “lethal to the most repressive of regimes” (Nook location 13). Of course, Kony 2012 is a perfect example of this attempt.
The problem with this thought process is something he discusses in chapter five. He says that a “mere exposure to information does not by itself decrease support for authoritarian governments; it does not guarantee an increase in media literacy or sophistication” (Nook location 123). Based on our discussions about the “digital divide” earlier this semester, I don’t believe that simply giving everyone access to the Internet and a Twitter account will automatically change the way they think. For me, this is not a “utopian” or “dystopian” viewpoint. It’s a realistic one.
Basically, Morozov wants us to grapple with the idea that dictators can benefit from the web as much as a democratic government can. He says dictators utilize the Internet in ways that are advantageous for them: boosting oppression, censorship, or on the flip side, providing a spin for propaganda. Just as sites such as Facebook and Google package our personal information and use it to target us with specific advertisements and other information, he urges us to “imagine building censorship systems” that can “learn everything about us to ban us from accessing relevant pages” (Nook location 106).
Probably the most unnerving point Morozov makes concerns Internet freedom in the United States. He says we love to promote free, unregulated Internet everywhere else but here at home. He tempers this “freedom” by pointing out attempts to introduce our own type of Internet kill switch and the FBI’s increasing surveillance abilities using our social networking sites. All of these things undermine the Internet Freedom Agenda that we push so proudly. Morozov says Western leaders still won’t admit that most threats to Internet freedom start right here. The fact of the matter is, forms of censorship happen every single day, even in America, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be implemented by the government. Take the recent Doonesbury comic strips satirizing the ongoing fight in Texas over the ultra-sound abortion law. If you read the comics section in The Advocate last week, you won’t find these strips among the ones printed, nor will you see any type of indication that the ones they actually ran were from previous weeks. Based on this decision, some readers may not know such a controversial topic was being covered at all unless you read the actual comic strips here.
I think a lot of people have a tendency to subscribe to one theory or the other, utopian or dystopian, good or evil when talking about the political and democratizing implications of the Internet. Morozov urges us to forget about both cyber-utopianism and Internet-centrism, and instead look at the Internet in the context of how it’s currently affecting our policies. We need to see what forces are reshaping the Internet, for better or for worse. Morozov says anyone who’s a “cyber-realist” understands that the Internet will produce different outcomes in different environments and political climates.
Yes, the Internet is a tool, maybe the most important one we have now. It’s certainly not going anywhere, so we have no choice but to embrace Hartley’s “digital future.” But we must learn how others have utilized it, and explore how we can best use it in the future.
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