You're Smarter Than Me
“When you’ve got real riots in the street,” said Evgeny Morozov, “Twitter riots do not look that threatening.”
I’ll forfeit any guise of intelligence here and admit that this quote is white noise to me. I’m overcome by a strange befuddlement upon reading Morozov’s words. It’s hard to describe. It’s somewhere close to a sexual attraction to Sarah Silverman. Half confusion. Half anger.
What’s not threatening or real about a riot on Twitter?
If you’ve made an argument that puts technology and the physical world in competition, chances are, I don’t understand you. You’re from a different world. I imagine it’s dull.
If the Internet hears or sees an atrocity that happens to you, I submit that your plight grows in reality. When Neda (or do I mean #neda?) stared into that camera as she was overcome by blood - only to be overcome by death - she was staring at the whole world. We all screamed for her.
I’m only interested in a digital platform’s potential not its flaws. If you “doubt Twitter as a vehicle for protest,” you’re not describing what could be, only how people are using it at the moment. You’re not a critic or an intellectual. You’re a laggard.
Henry Jenkins put it like this: George Orwell imagined a world where Big Brother would watch us with a constant surveillance. Now, with our mobile and recording devices, we are watching Big Brother. We’re omnipotent. One nation under CCTV in reverse.
Now, a scream in the street will do less than a shout on social networks. And if a lolcat gets in the way, that’s because we fucking like lolcats.
So, I don’t understand the quote because I only see potential and I’m never quick to dismiss an innovation online as failing, bad or counterproductive. Especially when it comes to giving people a voice they would have otherwise not had.
