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How Iran's Hackers Killed Big Brother
Most observers of the Twitter-fueled revolution rightly point out that this activity is at its most effective when it actually mobilizes real humans, puts bodies on the street, and gives dissidents the opportunity to organize successful retreats. Digital dissidence alone is easy, and easy to ignore.
But I think it's also too easy to underestimate the real power of the Internet to provide more than information. On the Internet, content is not king—it never was. The value of Tweets right now is less the information they contain than the solidarity they promote. Like civil-rights protesters who sang rousing hymns as they were carried off to jail, Twitterers are bearing witness to what's happening around them, and calling out into the darkness of cyberspace for confirmation. I'm here. You're here, too. We are present.
Twitter, for all its faults, and the Internet, for all its insubstantiality, nonetheless serve as the strands of an existential telegraph. By resisting those who would censor history in real time, those flinging messages into the ether are demonstrating their freedom of speech—or, rather, their freedom to speak in spite of all efforts to the contrary. This mere gesture of freedom—the ability to connect to others and confirm one's experience of the world—is what social networking is all about. While this may or may not be enough right now to topple an unjust government, the opposition, in demonstrating that this freedom is now a permanent right, has already claimed victory.
Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of media studies at The New School University and producer and correspondent for the PBS Frontline Digital Nation project, is the author of numerous books, including Cyberia, ScreenAgers, Media Virus, and, most recently, Life Inc., released this month by Random House.
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DemsDeBreaks
The situation in Iran gives the phrase "Power to the People" new life. Good for them.
There were a lot of Iranians at my Midwestern state college in the pre-Ayatollah latter 1970s. None of them struck me as the radical extremists Iranians have been portrayed as since then in the media. The only thing that I thought unfair was that most of the boys were in my 4 year college while their sisters were enrolled at a local 2 year college - the parents didn't think girls needed more education than a 2 year college to go home, get married, and raise families. And then I realized that my in-laws who had their kids in the 1950s did the same things with their children's college funds - budgeting for their boys to go to 4-year schools and their girls to 2-year schools. So, the Iranian parents of the 1970s were just 20 years or so behind our 'social enlightenment.' And, granted, these were kids whose families were prospering under the US-backed Shah of Iran's regime, but they were everyday people and not the caricatures of evil drawn by the media and politicians since then.
I suspect there is a substantial portion of Iran's professional population who are now in their 40s and 50s who were educated abroad, who have also imparted at least some of our Western ideals to their children who are the students and young professionals we see in the streets in these videos. They've had 30 years of living in a version of the 1950s where everyone will be happy as long as everyone pretends to be happy. They've been stuck with Toby McGuire and Reese Witherspoon in Pleasantville. The info that's leaking out via the internet is the equivalent of Pleasantville's red rose.
Iranians, prepare to see your world in full, living color.
Josh-Narins
A think most of the Iranians who could afford, and did send, their children to college abroad were going to be far more likely to be tolerant liberals than the kind of insular religious fundamentalists who currently rule Iran.
And like the legions of liberals who didn't know anyone who would vote for Bush, these people unlikely knew anyone who would have wanted a revolution.
I hear Marie Antoinette was so surprised she lost her head.
Josh-Narins
Of course the opposition is winning the internet war.
One candidate sought to represent the rural poor. The other candidate is the favorite of the urban elite.
The fact that powerful, foreign governments also favor the candidate of the urban elite, well, it makes me ask, again and again and again, can anyone show me one pre-election poll which suggested Mousavi was going to win?
One?
StateoftheInitiative
Yes. But I'm going to make you go look for it.
DemsDeBreaks
"The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our pre-election survey," the pollsters said, rejecting arguments the poll might have reflected a fearful reluctance to give honest answers.
Josh-Narins
Rejecting such arguments for reasons they stated quite plainly, such as, they were not afraid to make their views known on any number of controversial topics.
StateoftheInitiative
The current Iranian government is doing everything in their power to ban outgoing media. Why would you even consider a fair poll showing Mousavi ahead would be available?
The numbers aren't adding up. Millions of PAPER BALLOTS were counted and certified in 3 HOURS?! In a process that normally takes 3 DAYS in Iran? America has digitized voting and we don't even get our results in 3 hours.
I hope you don't think this is just a "No, we wanted him to win" argument.
To answer your question,Yes I can. But I'm going to have you look for it. You may have to read/listen as well. Even do a little math.
Josh-Narins
In Canada, they count millions of paper ballots in a few hours, and Iranians take their elections more seriously than the Canadians.
The fact that U.S. voting and counting software is entirely unfit for its intended purpose, easily hackable, and halfway brain dead is irrelevant. Yes, of course I can do better, thank you for asking.
tamcho
The number of votes cast in Canada's last election was just under 13 Million. The number of votes cast in this Iranian election: 40 MILLION. So it would be silly to compare the two.
NYUKULELE
This guy Rushkoff's lack of a sense of history is pathetic. Mousavi was a previous president of Iran, during which time he approved the fatwah on Salman Rushdie as official government policy.
Twitter means one really doesn't have to think. Superficiality rules. Probably why rushkoff champions it.
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n--Y--weedySeadragonNYUKULELE
"The net result proves that the age of the totalitarian dictatorship is over." Rushkoff
Either of the candidates is a stooge for the mullahs. And truly liberal candidate was not allowed to run. Moussavi is as much a totalitarian as Ahmadinejad.
I'll give the rest of your comments the consideration they deserve.
tedperl
The headline is hype, but the core argument is right, and the analysis of how tech is being deployed and contested with Iran seems reasonable.
You do have online groups, not sure I would quite use the word community, who are bearing witness, and making it much harder for the Iranian regime to pretend to the outside world that this is a minor issue, with "Alles in Ordnung" as the Germans might put it.
Couple this with CNN being slow off the mark, and the Iranian authorities booting out or limiting international press and you do have a new media world.
Hawnzz
All I have to say for the young in Iran... "Go kids Go!"
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n--Y--weedySeadragonman-in-tx
The Internet also apparently by-passed the hopelessly inflexible poseurs who populate the US Department of State's Foggy Bottom: They were loath to denounce the Iranian election fraud (indeed, they still may not have done so). The upshot? They were made to look like the risible dinosaurs that they are.
tksgle
The State Department takes its cues from the White House. The Secretary of State cannot go on her own...she represents the President..It so happens that they were both right in staying relatively quiet. In that way the Iranian leadership could not blame this country for causing all their troubles..If you knew any history of our relationship with Iran then you will realize that we had interfered before and it caused this country big problems. As far as twitter is concerned...it was the State Department that asked twitter to keep runningso the Iranian students could keep in touch with the outside world. Twitter was going to shut down for upgrades. It is common knowledge that the US States department has become the most tech savey of all the departments...they even hired technical specialists to modernize Foggy Bottom....get your facts straight.
Instigator
Twitter is a hero and Obama is a zero. http://thedailyinstigator.com/2009/06/iran-uprising-obama-flinches-twitter- steps-in/
atsegga
The Borgen Project has some good info on the cost of addressing global poverty.
$30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger.
$550 billion: U.S. Defense budget
Caetano2
Mousavi seems like a transitional figure - comparable to some of the Serbian politicians who rose around the time that Milosevic lost power.He's no democrat, but compared to the current leadership, he offers some hope of some type of greater openness; hence, the urban elites and students rally to his side.
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