The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

When the green revolution took place in Iran last year many of us saw every tweet of the revolutionaries. But, while it may have moved us, what impact did it actually have on the scene? To what extent has social networking aided the recent democratic revolutions in Tunisia and what is it’s impact today in Egypt? As the Internet spreads though China, Russia and even Lebanon, what impact is it having? Is it empowering democratic forces or is it providing a kind of organizing force for dictators and the forces of repression? Is the Internet a catalyst for social change for these fledgling forces of freedom, or a kind of glue actually holding authoritarian regimes together? For too long we’ve allowed conventional wisdom to dictate the discussion here. But the facts just may be somewhat different. Journalist and Evgeny Morozov takes us to place that exposes the dark side of the Internet freedom in his new work The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. My conversation with Evgeny Morozov: var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}