Has the Internet Democratized Our Society?

Internet and Democracy

In one sense, computers and the Internet are just a continuation of the communications revolution, starting with the printing press then continuing with the telegraph, telephone, motion pictures, radio and television. Could this be leading to a more fundamental change in history on the same level as the agricultural and industrial revolutions? This is a more problematic proposition. Of course, the idea of a post-industrial economy based on services and high technology dates back to the 1960s, although some visionaries had an inkling of it even in the 19th Century. Skills and education that were valuable in an industrial economy have become obsolete in the new system, although this has happened before in the history of capitalism. Society has changed relatively little from the era before the computer age, with only a few exceptions, such as the use of computers to speed up financial transactions and in scientific efforts like the search for alien life through SETI@Home and for determining the human genome. Supposedly, these new technologies would be the death knell of repressive authoritarian and totalitarian regimes everywhere, and open of the door to a new liberal-democratic culture of global capitalism and universal human rights. In 1989-91 the fall of the Iron Curtain seemed to conform that this new era was finally at hand. Needless to say, this has not happened, and authoritarian governments like those in Iran and China are well able to monitor, censor and control the Internet. They may never be able to accomplish perfectly and completely, but their powers of censorship, control and intimidation of individual users and Internet companies are considerable indeed. Although both the dangers and benefits of the new high technology society and economy have certainly been exaggerated over the past forty years, this does not negate the fact that the impact of technology has been significant. It has made the speed and efficiency of financial transactions, news, communications and information exchange much greater, and facilitated major advances in science and mathematics. On the other hand, the fact remains that the majority of people in the world are poor and that their jobs are dull, routine and often poorly paid, which was also the case during the industrial revolution.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT 2

Table of Contents & #8230;.4

Introduction 5

Poverty, Inequality and Work in the Information Age 7

Repressive Regimes and Facebook Revolutions 8

Conclusion 13

Reference List 14

Introduction: How Revolutionary is the High Tech Revolution?

There have been three great technological revolutions in history. About 12,000 years ago, in the late Neolithic period, humans began to move from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones. Then 6,000 years ago the learned how to fashion metal tools and weapons during the so-called Bronze Age. About 300 years ago, the Industrial Revolution began, with the first early steam engines and textile mills, followed in due course by railroads, gasoline and electrical motors, nuclear power, jet and rocket engines. All of these revolutions have "irreversibly altered the course of human history and fundamentally refashioned human societies" (McClellan and Dorn 2006, p. 275). At the same time, there has been an intellectual and scientific revolution led by luminaries like Newton, Darwin and Einstein that fundamentally changed humanity's view of the universe and its place within it.

In one sense, computers and the Internet are just a continuation of the communications revolution, starting with the printing press then continuing with the telegraph, telephone, motion pictures, radio and television. Could this be leading to a more fundamental change in history on the same level as the agricultural and industrial revolutions? This is a more problematic proposition. Of course, the idea of a post-industrial economy based on services and high technology dates back to the 1960s, although some visionaries had an inkling of it even in the 19th Century. Skills and education that were valuable in an industrial economy have become obsolete in the new system, although this has happened before in the history of capitalism. In an economy and society increasingly based on virtual realities and interactions, there will certainly be some major changes in human culture and psychology (Barglow 1994). Although today "no one would design a bridge or a large building without using computers," many people seem to forget that high quality construction and engineering was all done without the benefit of computers fifty or one hundred years ago (Baase 2009, p. 4).

People in the past could also socialize and communicate without the benefit of email and the Internet; they could obtain news without blogging or look at the encyclopedia without Wikipedia, and even though none of these existed ten years ago, this seems like a different age. Despite all the great increases in the speed and efficiency of communication "citizens normally pursue a lifestyle that would be broadly recognizable to their ancestors 50 years earlier" (Walsham, p. 3). Apart from the computer industry, there has not been a new industrial revolution equivalent to that in the 18th and 19th Centuries, with the radical break with traditional agrarian society and the unprecedented changes in "food, clothing, housing, or transportation" (Agre, p. 5). Society has changed relatively little from the era before the computer age, with only a few exceptions, such as the use of computers to speed up financial transactions and in scientific efforts like the search for alien life through SETI@Home and for determining the human genome. On the Internet "valuable and worthless indiscriminately mixed," with racist and pornographic websites among the most popular (Rosenberg 2004, p. 18). In a society where more transactions were being carried out online, a new type of cyber criminal developed with the special skills necessary to steal electronically.

In the past thirty years, the new technological developments in the area of personal computing and the Internet were routinely heralded as open up a liberal New World Order in which individuals and businesses would have free access to more information than even before in history. Supposedly, these new technologies would be the death knell of repressive authoritarian and totalitarian regimes everywhere, and open of the door to a new liberal-democratic culture of global capitalism and universal human rights. In 1989-91 the fall of the Iron Curtain seemed to conform that this new era was finally at hand. Needless to say, this has not happened, and authoritarian governments like those in Iran and China are well able to monitor, censor and control the Internet. They may never be able to accomplish perfectly and completely, but their powers of censorship, control and intimidation of individual users and Internet companies are considerable indeed.

Poverty, Inequality and Work in the Information Age

Some people like the "self-explorers" described by Kinsman have been of the cutting edge of experiencing the libertarian side of the new technology (Kinsman 1990). On the other hand, inequality has actually increased during the new era of high technology and computers, both within and among nations. By the year 2000, just 358 billionaires had more wealth than the bottom half of the entire world's population combined, which was proportionally much greater than in 1960, or even the 1920s and the 1890s (Walsham, p. 24). In Class Warfare in an Information Age, Michael Perlman made it clear that the age of high technology is hardly going to mean the end of social classes or class conflict. Distinctions between those who own and control the new technology vs. those who work for them and consume their products will continue as always, and those who cannot afford to access the new technology will be relegated to lower class status as well (Perlman 2000. There is a growing gap between information and knowledge workers and those who still perform more traditional tasks.

For decades, workers have been rightly concerned about what would become of them in an economy increasingly taken over by computers and automation. This is not a new issue, however, since the tendency to replace human labor with machines has been constant from the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Early-19th Century 'Luddites' and machine-breakers were often hand-loom weavers displaced by the first generation technology of the factory system. Then as now, workers feared a future in which jobs would no longer have any place for "human comprehension and judgment" and would become "increasingly isolated, routine, and perfunctory" (Zuboff 1988, p. 7). Working at home has become far more common in the Internet age as well, at least for those workers with the skills and abilities to benefit from these new technologies. In many ways, though, the new high tech workplace with employees confined to cubicles and performing routine tasks under continual supervision is not fundamentally different from the old Fordist factory, except that the skill levels are higher, the shop floor quieter and the job centred on processing of information rather than parts and raw materials.

Managers of large corporations and the national security state can and do use the new technologies for surveillance and control. New developments in technology have the effect of creating an environment in which "chronic monitoring and utilization of knowledge can create existential anxiety in the individual, or even a sense of personal meaninglessness" (Walsham 2001, p. 15). All throughout the 20th Century, there was a pervasive sense that society was controlled by managers, experts and technicians over whom the individual had no control, and the new technology has made these elites seem even more distant and omnipotent. Even among many computer professionals, there has been a growing fear of the potential for using the new technologies for repression and control, and indeed this happens every day in countries like Iran and China (Agre 1997, p. 10).

Repressive Regimes and Facebook Revolutions

News spreads more rapidly than ever before via cable, satellite and Internet, and anyone with a cell phone could become an instant amateur journalist. Even highly repressive societies like China, Iran and Egypt could not completely control this new medium, although during every surge of revolutionary activity the first targets of repressive regimes was always the Internet and wireless communications -- along with foreign reporters. Cyber-democracy truly came into its own during the recent Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, particularly among young, technically savvy protesters. Even in relatively poor nations, pro-democracy rebels were able to take advantage of the communications networks in the big cities to organize revolution at the grassroots levels (Tsagarousianou 1998). Political parties, NGOs, and labor organizations now use these technologies routinely, and in Egypt and Tunisia, leaders of the new high tech industries also became revolutionary political organizations, while journalists from the Internet and satellite news networks openly took sides with the pro-democracy movements.

Even if the new technologies to not fundamentally change social and economic structures, they had certainly come into their own by 2011, and proven their usefulness as an organizing tool that had the potential to bring down authoritarian regimes very quickly. When the Internet began, "the first cybernauts certainly expected that virtual communications spaces would be exempt from state interference" but this has definitely not turned out to be the case (Hamelink, 2000, p. 140). Pervasive Internet censorship in the norm in countries that still have totalitarian regimes of the Left and Right such as China, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Cuba and Vietnam (Zuchova-Walske, 2010, p. 101). China and Iran also stand out as having "the most sophisticated state-mandated filtering systems in the world" (Khiabany and Sreberny, 2009, p. 208.)

China has 330 million Internet users and 70 million bloggers, but also one of the most stringent systems of Internet censorship in the world, with 30-40 people serving prison sentences for writing about politically sensitive topics online. China always claims that censorship is "necessary for social stability" and to block pornography and other "harmful content," and rejects all foreign criticism as "interference in China's domestic affairs" (Figliola, 2010, p. 4). Censorship of the Internet began as early as 1996, when the government banned the websites of the Tibet Information Network, Playboy, most U.S. newspapers and nearly 100 others. It also required all Internet users to register with the state and "sign a declaration that they will not visit forbidden sites" (Hamelink, p. 141). Since President Hu Jintao came to power in 2003, censorship has been increasing along with "a steady crackdown on the Internet." The Chinese government employs tens of thousands of people to monitor and censor the Internet, overseen by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), the State Council Information Office and the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department (MacKinnon, 2006, p. 3). These agencies use website blocking and keyword filtering, actively monitors Internet cafes, ISP providers, university bulletin boards, and requires all websites and blogs to be registered, which "creates an undercurrent of fear and promotes self-censorship." The government also hires thousands of writers to create websites and blogs for its own propaganda purposes (Figliola, p. 5). All nine Internet Access Providers (IAPs) are licensed by the state, and the hardware and software to block content and keywords is configured directly into the Chinese Internet down to the router level (MacKinnon, p. 10). All Internet Content Providers (ICPs) are licensed and registered by the state as well, and must agree in writing to block or censor content to which the government objects (MacKinnon, p. 12). Search engines are also designed to filter out certain keywords and have blacklists of forbidden websites (MacKinnon, p. 13). Chinese journalists use foreign websites for information on major news stories, even those these are censored and difficult to access, and are very "skilled" at using proxy servers (Yu, 2009, p. 183n).

U.S. companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo cooperate with censorship in China rather than risk alienating the government in such a lucrative market. Yahoo has provided email addresses of account holders to the Chinese authorities that resulted in political dissidents being sent to prison, while Microsoft has shut down blogs and blocked words like "democracy" from MSN Spaces (Figliola, p. 6). Google has the second-largest search engine in China after the Chinese company Baidu, and cooperates with censorship by posting messages on websites indicating that they have been blocked due to "local laws, regulations, and policies." On the other hand, it moved its search records out of the country in 2006 and does not host Gmail and Blogger services there. Cisco Systems, Nortel and Juniper Networks have all sold infrastructure to China to facilitate filtering, surveillance and monitoring of the Internet (Figliola, p. 7). In 2009 the Chinese government ordered Green Dam Youth Escort software installed on all computers allegedly to block pornography and other "harmful content," but massive protests at home and abroad prevented this (Figlioa, p. 8).

Iran has 23 million Internet users and a very active blogosphere, and the regime also uses the Internet as a tool to spread its own propaganda from a Right-wing Islamic point-of-view, and also controls 'official' Internet cafes. There are "regular crackdowns" on all other Internet cafes, as well as arrests of users, bloggers and web journalists (Khiabany and Sreberny, p. 207). In 2003 alone, the regime blocked over 15,000 websites, which is possible in Iran because the Internet is a state monopoly under the supervision of the Ministry of Post, Telephone and Telegraph and the Ministry of Intelligence. All online communications and content is monitored by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and all websites receive prior approval from The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Figliola, p. 10). ISPs companies are not allowed to exist without their approval, and no one is allowed to publish any content that is critical of the state, the Ayatollah Khomeini's teachings, Islam, Islamic values or that denies the existence of God. In addition, promoting "luxury" is against the law, as is disclosure of "information," any acts against the "security of the country" and "religiously forbidden articles and pictures." Each province of the country has a committee that regulates all Internet cafes and gathers information on websites considered to be immoral, pornographic or hostile to the regime (Khiabany and Sreberny, p. 209).

As in China, all ISP companies and internet cafes are required to adhere to these rules, and censor or block forbidden sites and content. In addition, the government constantly attempts to close all ports through which Internet users attempt to evade the censorship and filtering system, which is also able to block or shut down proxy all proxy servers. In Iran, prepaid phone cards are also programmed in such a way that their users are unable to search for certain terms on the Internet, such as "sex" and even "women." The government also deliberately keeps the speed of the Internet slow for households and public access users so as to be better able to monitor and control it -- the only country in the world to do so (Khiabany and Sreberny, p. 210). Just like in China, bloggers and Internet users in Iran are constantly setting up new websites "as soon as the old ones are shut down," while www.stop.censoring.us "provides reliable 'official and unofficial accounts on Internet censorship in Iran" (Alavi, 2005, p. 343). In the 2009 election, the Internet proved to be such an effective tool in monitoring and reporting on fraud that the regime was simply forced to shut down all telecommunications and satellite links in the country, and arrest or expel any journalists who attempted to report the unofficial version of the election news.