In August 2006, 18 months before I would choose to leave South Africa, I was invited to speak at a gathering of technology pundits.
I warned of revolution, that emerging social media would lead to people finding mutual interests that would permit them to express themselves in ways we had yet to understand. People who are currently alienated and isolated will make common cause with others.
I was trying to understand how Al Qaeda and similar terrorist organisations could be beaten, and I knew it would not be by the existing system of national governments. I also knew that what did beat Al Qaeda would be foreign and chaotic.
My thoughts are summarised in a presentation I put online in 2010, which I called
The State Tetrad
.
I was suggesting that social media would start to lead global and local politics; that these so-called social media thought-leaders I was addressing would need to start thinking about what the implications were likely to be.
I was met with polite discomfort and bemusement. They were wrong.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
Limited dictatorships like Egypt and Iran will have some tough choices to make about social media. Do you let it exist even if it makes it easier to form dissent and keep the economy going or do you stifle all dissent by shutting down the internet and cell phones and cripple the economy?
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
FredHayek wrote: Limited dictatorships like Egypt and Iran will have some tough choices to make about social media. Do you let it exist even if it makes it easier to form dissent and keep the economy going or do you stifle all dissent by shutting down the internet and cell phones and cripple the economy?
No offense, but this is a tough decision for countries claiming to be free.....if I was a dictator, this would be far from a tough decision....I would still let people do it and then monitor all communications (even datalog them) so that I can weed out the bad guys at some point in the future. The trick would be to make people think it is ok to say anything they want for some time and then flip the script. So I would make like people had the right to free speech, then I would slowly restrict this in ways I would convince the people they are necessary, even if it conflicted with previous free speech rules. Then after 5-10 years of people going on and on about what they believe using phones, internet communications and even mailed letters I was photographing, I would then let it leak that we were watching everyone...slowly over the course of two weeks, denying every step and then eventually selling folks on how needed it is (and they will jump right in line, trust me, even those that had very high expectations of freedom, they will literally market for me)....then the people that still spoke up would be the ones I go after first for questioning, the people that spoke up before the leak would be on the second tier for questioning and so on.
on that note wrote: That the top three threads on American Independence day on this forum ---- just weeks after the revealing of massive citizen spying programs and in the middle of massive govt take overs of industry/economy and taxation hovering at 50% ---- are about Egypt.
My sense is that from a media perspective, these foreign conflicts are good for our US govt today. They got folks that may have spent some time today talking about the irony of our situation as American Citizens pretending, instead focusing on what is going on in Egypt actually has more to do with our lives than our current domestic messes.
There is not even a thread talking about how Americans are more worked up when fireworks get cancelled than when freedoms get cancelled.
Anyone else notice that people can protest in a country and it can result in the president getting ousted....they must have really not liked their president....it shows how universally accepted our president really is, despite all the rhetoric to the opposite.
Don't forget to celebrate your independence from that tyrannical British govt today. Appreciate that you don't have to deal with a top heavy govt force making most of the decisions in your life the way they did 225+ years ago.
What an embarrassingly lame attempt at an insightful thought provoking post
Give me an example?
Ah..How about the post I quoted? Just now figuring out this message board thing Walter?
And BTW- Nice face. I’ve Seen Better Looking faces on display at the British Museum of natural history
FredHayek wrote: Limited dictatorships like Egypt and Iran will have some tough choices to make about social media. Do you let it exist even if it makes it easier to form dissent and keep the economy going or do you stifle all dissent by shutting down the internet and cell phones and cripple the economy?
No offense, but this is a tough decision for countries claiming to be free.....if I was a dictator, this would be far from a tough decision....I would still let people do it and then monitor all communications (even datalog them) so that I can weed out the bad guys at some point in the future. The trick would be to make people think it is ok to say anything they want for some time and then flip the script. So I would make like people had the right to free speech, then I would slowly restrict this in ways I would convince the people they are necessary, even if it conflicted with previous free speech rules. Then after 5-10 years of people going on and on about what they believe using phones, internet communications and even mailed letters I was photographing, I would then let it leak that we were watching everyone...slowly over the course of two weeks, denying every step and then eventually selling folks on how needed it is (and they will jump right in line, trust me, even those that had very high expectations of freedom, they will literally market for me)....then the people that still spoke up would be the ones I go after first for questioning, the people that spoke up before the leak would be on the second tier for questioning and so on.
Oh....just kidding.
Mao sort of did this, but didn't think it out. He asked the public for their opinions on his regime and millions of people did just that. He didn't like them and now had names of the dissenters he "needed" to lock up.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
