At the critical climax of the Egyptian revolution, one of its sparks, Google's Wael Ghonim, told his followers on Twitter that he would not speak to them through media but instead through the Facebook page he created, the page he'd used to gather momentum for the protest, the page that had gotten him arrested, the page that was one of the reasons that Hosni Mubarak hit the kill switch on the entire Internet in Egypt (here's another reason). After Mubarak left, Ghonim said on CNN that he wanted to meet Mark Zuckerberg to thank him for Facebook and the ability to make that page.
After the Reformation in Europe, Martin Luther thanked Johannes Gutenberg. Printing, he said, was "God's highest and extremest act of grace." Good revolutionaries thank their tools and toolmakers.
There's a silly debate, well-documented by Jay Rosen, over the credit social tools should receive in the revolutions, successful, abortive, and emerging, in Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, and elsewhere in the Middle East. Jay compiles fine examples of the genre, which specializes in shooting down an argument no one we know has made: that Twitter carries out revolutions. (I would add the Evgeny Morozov variation, which incessantly wants to remind us -- not that anyone I know has forgotten -- that these tools can also be used by bad actors, badly.) No one I know -- no one -- says that these revolutions weren't fought by people. As a blogger said on Al Jazeera English, Twitter didn't fight Egypt's police, Egyptians did. Who doesn't agree with that?
This same alleged debate -- curmudgeons shooting at phantom technological determinists and triumphalists -- goes on to this day over Gutenberg, too. Adrian Johns, author of The Nature of the Book, accuses premier Gutenberg scholar Elizabeth Eisenstein, author of The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, of giving too much credit to the printing press. He does not buy her contention that print itself was revolutionary and "created a fundamental division in human history."
Like Jay, I'm a befuddled over the roots of the curmudgeons' one-sided debate. Why do they so object to tools being given credit? Are they really objecting, instead, to technology as an agent of change, shifting power from incumbents to insurgents? Why should I care about their complaints? I am confident that these tools have been used by the revolutionaries and have a role. What's more interesting is to ask what that role is, what that impact is.
I was honored to have been able to call Eisenstein to interview her for my book, Public Parts. Her perspective on the change wrought through Gutenberg was incredibly helpful to my effort to analyze the change that our modern tools of publicness are enabling. When I asked her about the internet, she demurred, arguing that she's not even on Facebook. (Though I do love that when she's researching, her first stop is Wikipedia.)
At the end of our conversation, Eisenberg raised the Middle East, observing that "they sort of missed Gutenberg. They jumped from the oral phase to this phase." She was quick to add that it's facile and wrong to say that the Middle East is still in the Middle Ages; she's not saying that, merely observing that "they skipped Gutenberg, for better or worse." She said this before the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions and I was not sure what she meant.
Today, it occurs to me that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube may be the Gutenberg press of the Middle East, tools like his that enable people to speak, share, and gather. Without those tools, could revolutions occur? Of course, curmudgeons, they could. Without people and their passion, could revolutions occur? Of course not, curmudgeons. But why are these revolutions occurring now? No, curmudgeons, we'll never be able to answer that question.
But it does matter that the revolutionaries of the Middle East use -- indeed, depend upon -- these social tools and the net. That is the reason why we must protect them, for by doing so we protect the public and its freedoms. If you follow Gladwell, et al, and believe that the social tools are merely toys and trifles, then what does it matter if they are shut down? That is why the curmudgeons' debate with themselves matters: because it could do harm; it could result in dismissing the tools of publicness just when we most need to safeguard them.
In the privileged West, we have been talking about net neutrality as a question of whether we can watch movies well. In the Middle East, net neutrality has a much more profund meaning: as a human right to connect. When Mubarak shut down the internet, when China shuts down Facebook, when Turkey shuts down YouTube, when America concocts its own kill switch, they violate the human rights of their citizens as much as if they burned the products of Gutenberg's press.
In the midst of the Egyptian revolution, I realized that many of us in the West -- and I include myself squarely in this -- act under the assumption that progress in digital democracy would come here first, because our technology and our democracies are more advanced. Then it became clear to me that such advances would come instead where they are most needed: in the Middle East.
This is why I keep calling for a discussion about an independent set of principles for cyberspace so we can hold them over the heads of governments and corporations that would restrict and control our tools of publicness. I keep revising my list of principles, from this, to this, to this, to this:
I. We have a right to connect.
II. We have the right to speak.
III. We have the right to assemble & act
IV. Privacy is a responsibility of knowing.
V. Publicness is a responsibility of sharing.
VI. Information should be public by default, secret by necessity.
VII. What is public is a public good.
VIII. All bits are created equal.
IX. The internet shall be operated openly.
X. The internet shall be distributed.
This, to me, is a far more fruitful discussion than whether Facebook and Twitter deserves credit for Egypt and Tunisia. The revolutionaries deserve credit. They also deserve the freedom to use the tools of their revolutions.
Follow Jeff Jarvis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeffjarvis
And from that need and motivation, it is the sharing of impassioned voices that commandeers the souls into indignation and movement. And so today, it is connectedness that is the catalyst of that voice.
I don't think that printing Bibles is going to go over well in Arabia.
The medium is the message, as Marshall McCluhan said. The internet and cell phones with social media will enable organization and facilitate communication to major media. The dialectics are obvious, it is the raising of consciousness that is required sometimes along with organizing strikes and demonstrations.
The technology is necessary but not sufficent by any means. The solution is not that clear; replacing one dictator with yet another to maintain the same bargain(s) will only result in more pressures for real changes to Egypt's situation. Many of these pressures are from outside of Egypt. Many are the result of global economic conditions and politicies. The price of wheat has more to do with Wall Street speculation that the actual cost of food. A new civic and social organization is needed, too. Having the military in charge is more like the past thirty years.
Can technology in communication be used to create a better form of governance is the question. The answers may be in following the lead of other constitutional democracies with a constitution and a bill of rights. That is cut-and-paste technology.
My suspicion is that Egyptians will be disappointed with what they are likely to end up - a thoroughly managed "democracy" by their own vassals of the globalist capitalist classes. After "democracy" there will be no more mass demonstrations. It is easy to be against a despot but it is not so easy to be against a despotic system with a democratic veneer. ;-)
They know everything went to hell with the trade imbalances, but even though the building is on fire, they refuse to do anything and everything they can to put the fire out.
They prefer to look around them for somewhere else to stay. They are all independent individuals, not a family. It is not their family home. They do not care.
US citizens just see themselves as eternal immigrants and emigrants in transit.
then by all means..
change occurs.
It does seem obvious that the availability of printing made a huge difference in the Reformation and Enlightenment. It does seem obvious that ubiquitous instantaneous communication, including cell phones with digital cameras, makes a huge difference compared to photocopies circulated by hand. It does seem obvious that, whatever the difference new communication technology makes in the long run, whoever adapts first will gain a substantial advantage; and that sometimes that will be revolutionaries.
But I don't see any huge difference between the glorious Facebook and Twitter (so obviously important, we're told, that if anyone objects to elevating them to the status of "agents" it must be because they really object to reality itself) and ordinary blogs, email, and cell phones (so obviously unimportant that we aren't told anything about them at all).
It seems likely that The Social Tools are merely toys and trifles, comparable to the difference between a claw hammer and having to keep a separate tool on hand to pull nails that you drive with a ball-peen hammer. Taking away someone's hammer in the middle of a project will obviously interfere, but it doesn't follow that the upgrade from ball-peen to claw hammer matters.
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The Middle East didn't skip Gutenberg entirely. They skipped early Gutenberg, when authorities hadn't yet adapted to the existence of printing.
www.progresspartisan.wordpress.com
"The Council of Constance declared Wycliffe (on 4 May 1415) a stiff-necked heretic and under the ban of the Church. It was decreed that his books be burned and his remains be exhumed. The exhumation was carried out in 1428 when, at the command of Pope Martin V, his remains were dug up, burned, and the ashes cast into the River Swift, which flows through Lutterworth." (Wikipedia)
I haven't heard of Gutenberg suffering a similar fate, so I think Twitter is safe for now.
Al Jazeera, however........