Evgeny Morozov: How the Internet strengthens dictatorships

60,418 views ・ 2009-09-22

TED


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00:12
Good morning. I think, as a grumpy Eastern European,
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I was brought in to play the pessimist this morning. So bear with me.
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Well, I come from the former Soviet Republic of Belarus,
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which, as some of you may know,
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is not exactly an oasis of liberal democracy.
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So that's why I've always been fascinated
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with how technology could actually reshape
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and open up authoritarian societies like ours.
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So, I'm graduating college
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and, feeling very idealistic,
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I decided to join the NGO
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which actually was using new media
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to promote democracy and media reform
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in much of the former Soviet Union.
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However, to my surprise,
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I discovered that dictatorships
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do not crumble so easily.
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In fact, some of them actually
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survived the Internet challenge,
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and some got even more repressive.
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So this is when I ran out of my idealism and
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decided to quit my NGO job
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and actually study how the Internet could impede democratization.
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Now, I must tell you that this was never
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a very popular argument,
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and it's probably not very popular yet
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with some of you sitting in this audience.
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It was never popular with many political leaders,
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especially those in the United States
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who somehow thought that new media
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would be able to do what missiles couldn't.
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That is, promote democracy in difficult places
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where everything else has already been tried and failed.
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And I think by 2009,
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this news has finally reached Britain,
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so I should probably add Gordon Brown to this list as well.
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However, there is an underlying argument about logistics,
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which has driven so much of this debate. Right?
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So if you look at it close enough,
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you'll actually see that much of this
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is about economics.
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The cybertopians say, much like fax machines
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and Xerox machines did in the '80s,
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blogs and social networks
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have radically transformed the economics of protest,
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so people would inevitably rebel.
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To put it very simply,
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the assumption so far has been
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that if you give people enough connectivity,
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if you give them enough devices,
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democracy will inevitably follow.
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And to tell you the truth,
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I never really bought into this argument,
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in part because I never saw three American presidents
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agree on anything else in the past.
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(Laughter)
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But, you know, even beyond that,
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if you think about the logic underlying it,
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is something I call iPod liberalism,
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where we assume that every single Iranian or Chinese
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who happens to have and love his iPod
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will also love liberal democracy.
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And again, I think this is kind of false.
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But I think a much bigger problem with this
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is that this logic --
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that we should be dropping iPods not bombs --
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I mean, it would make a fascinating title
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for Thomas Friedman's new book.
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(Laughter)
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But this is rarely a good sign. Right?
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So, the bigger problem with this logic
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is that it confuses the intended
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versus the actual uses of technology.
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For those of you who think that
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new media of the Internet
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could somehow help us avert genocide,
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should look no further than Rwanda,
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where in the '90s it was actually two radio stations
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which were responsible for fueling much of the ethnic hatred in the first place.
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But even beyond that, coming back to the Internet,
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what you can actually see
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is that certain governments
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have mastered the use of cyberspace
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for propaganda purposes. Right?
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And they are building what I call the Spinternet.
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The combination of spin, on the one hand,
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and the Internet on the other.
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So governments from Russia to China to Iran
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are actually hiring, training and paying bloggers
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in order to leave ideological comments
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and create a lot of ideological blog posts
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to comment on sensitive political issues. Right?
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So you may wonder, why on Earth are they doing it?
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Why are they engaging with cyberspace?
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Well my theory is that
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it's happening because censorship actually
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is less effective than you think it is in many of those places.
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The moment you put something critical in a blog,
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even if you manage to ban it immediately,
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it will still spread around thousands and thousands of other blogs.
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So the more you block it,
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the more it emboldens people to actually avoid the censorship
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and thus win in this cat-and-mouse game.
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So the only way to control this message
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is actually to try to spin it
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and accuse anyone who has written something critical
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of being, for example, a CIA agent.
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And, again, this is happening quite often.
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Just to give you an example of how it works in China, for example.
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There was a big case in February 2009
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called "Elude the Cat."
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And for those of you who didn't know, I'll just give a little summary.
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So what happened is that a 24-year-old man,
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a Chinese man, died in prison custody.
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And police said that it happened
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because he was playing hide and seek,
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which is "elude the cat" in Chinese slang,
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with other inmates and hit his head
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against the wall,
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which was not an explanation which sat well with many Chinese bloggers.
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So they immediately began posting a lot of critical comments.
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In fact, QQ.com, which is a popular Chinese website,
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had 35,000 comments
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on this issue within hours.
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But then authorities did something very smart.
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Instead of trying to purge these comments,
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they instead went and reached out to the bloggers.
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And they basically said, "Look guys. We'd like you to become netizen investigators."
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So 500 people applied,
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and four were selected to actually go and tour the facility in question,
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and thus inspect it and then blog about it.
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Within days the entire incident was forgotten,
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which would have never happened if they simply tried to block the content.
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People would keep talking about it for weeks.
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And this actually fits with another interesting theory
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about what's happening in authoritarian states
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and in their cyberspace.
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This is what political scientists call authoritarian deliberation,
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and it happens when governments are actually reaching out to their critics
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and letting them engage with each other online.
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We tend to think
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that somehow this is going to harm these dictatorships,
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but in many cases it only strengthens them.
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And you may wonder why.
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I'll just give you a very short list of reasons
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why authoritarian deliberation
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may actually help the dictators.
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And first it's quite simple.
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Most of them operate in a complete information vacuum.
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They don't really have the data they need
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in order to identify emerging threats facing the regime.
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So encouraging people to actually go online
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and share information and data
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on blogs and wikis is great
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because otherwise, low level apparatchiks and bureaucrats
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will continue concealing what's actually happening in the country, right?
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So from this perspective, having blogs and wikis
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produce knowledge has been great.
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Secondly, involving public in any decision making
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is also great
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because it helps you to share the blame
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for the policies which eventually fail.
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Because they say, "Well look, we asked you,
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we consulted you, you voted on it.
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You put it on the front page of your blog.
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Well, great. You are the one who is to blame."
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And finally, the purpose of
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any authoritarian deliberation efforts
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is usually to increase the legitimacy of the regimes, both at home and abroad.
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So inviting people to all sorts of public forums,
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having them participate in decision making,
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it's actually great.
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Because what happens is that then
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you can actually point to this initiative and say,
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"Well, we are having a democracy. We are having a forum."
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Just to give you an example,
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one of the Russian regions, for example,
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now involves its citizens
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in planning its strategy up until year 2020.
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Right? So they can go online
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and contribute ideas on what that region would look like by the year 2020.
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I mean, anyone who has been to Russia would know
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that there was no planning in Russia for the next month.
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So having people involved in planning for 2020
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is not necessarily going to change anything,
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because the dictators are still the ones who control the agenda.
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Just to give you an example from Iran,
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we all heard about the Twitter revolution
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that happened there,
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but if you look close enough, you'll actually see
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that many of the networks and blogs
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and Twitter and Facebook were actually operational.
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They may have become slower,
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but the activists could still access it
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and actually argue that having access to them
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is actually great for many authoritarian states.
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And it's great simply because
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they can gather open source intelligence.
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In the past it would take you weeks, if not months,
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to identify how Iranian activists connect to each other.
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Now you actually know how they connect to each other
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by looking at their Facebook page.
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I mean KGB, and not just KGB,
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used to torture in order to actually get this data.
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Now it's all available online.
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(Laughter)
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But I think the biggest conceptual pitfall
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that cybertopians made
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is when it comes to digital natives, people who have grown up online.
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We often hear about cyber activism,
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how people are getting more active because of the Internet.
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Rarely hear about cyber hedonism, for example,
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how people are becoming passive.
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Why? Because they somehow assume that the Internet
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is going to be the catalyst of change
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that will push young people into the streets,
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while in fact it may actually be the new opium for the masses
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which will keep the same people in their rooms downloading pornography.
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That's not an option being considered too strongly.
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So for every digital renegade that is revolting in the streets of Tehran,
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there may as well be two digital captives
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who are actually rebelling only in the World of Warcraft.
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And this is realistic. And there is nothing wrong about it
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because the Internet has greatly empowered many of these young people
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and it plays a completely different social role for them.
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If you look at some of the surveys
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on how the young people actually benefit from the Internet,
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you'll see that the number of teenagers in China, for example,
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for whom the Internet actually broadens their sex life,
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is three times more than in the United States.
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So it does play a social role,
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however it may not necessarily lead to political engagement.
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So the way I tend to think of it
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is like a hierarchy of cyber-needs in space,
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a total rip-off from Abraham Maslow.
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But the point here is that
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when we get the remote Russian village online,
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what will get people to the Internet
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is not going to be the reports from Human Rights Watch.
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It's going to be pornography, "Sex and the City,"
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or maybe watching funny videos of cats.
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So this is something you have to recognize.
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So what should we do about it?
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Well I say we have to stop thinking
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about the number of iPods per capita
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and start thinking about ways in which
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we can empower intellectuals,
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dissidents, NGOs and then the members of civil society.
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Because even what has been happening up 'til now
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with the Spinternet and authoritarian deliberation,
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there is a great chance that those voices will not be heard.
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So I think we should shatter some of our utopian assumptions
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and actually start doing something about it.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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