I recently spoke at a panel on “Online Activism Around the World” with Nancy Scola, Ralf Bendrath and Jon Pincus at the Computers Freedom and Privacy 2009 Conference.
Although I was supposed to speak about Vote Report India and digital activism in India, I ended up speaking about how social technologies are value-agnostic.
At each of the four levels of Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence, social technologies can lead to both good and bad outcomes.
User generated content can be used to break news or spread propaganda. Collective action can be used to organize protests against a totalitarian regime or perpetrate violence against its detractors. Online communities can create cosmopolitan open societies or cult-like closed ones. Collective intelligence can be used to benefit consumers and citizens or profile them for surveillance or commercial exploitation.
Some highlights from the talks and the panel –
- Why real political change will not be brought about by online activism, but by using online engagement to build real world institutions.
- Why digital technologies don’t necessarily distribute power by default, but can also be used to centralize power.
- Why the Obama administration might be the most sophisticated propaganda machine in the human history.
I had fun being part of the panel. I hope you have fun watching it.
