How Iran's Hackers Killed Big Brother - The Daily Beast
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Saved by 4 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2009-06-16
- Cnansen on 2009-06-18 - Tags Twitter_Iran
- Windwardtech on 2009-06-16 - Tags twitter , socialnetworking , facebook , iran_election
- Willrich on 2009-06-16 - Tags twitter , shifts , politics , world , iran
- Betajames on 2009-06-16 - Tags social , media , facebook , twitter , networking , digital , iran
Public Sticky notes
But I think it's also too easy to underestimate the real power of the Internet to provide more than information. On the Internet, content is not king - it never was. The value of Tweets right now is less the information they contain than the solidarity they promote. Like civil rights protesters who sang rousing hymns as they were carried off to jail, Twitterers are bearing witness to what's happening around them, and calling out into the darkness of cyberspace for confirmation. I'm here. You're here, too. We are present.
Twitter, for all its faults, and the Internet, for all its insubstantiality, nonetheless serve as the strands of an existential telegraph. By resisting those who would censor history in real time, those flinging messages into the ether are demonstrating their freedom of speech—or, rather, their freedom to speak in spite of all efforts to the contrary. This mere gesture of freedom— the ability to connect to others and confirm one's experience of the world — is what social networking is all about. While this may or may not be enough right now to topple an unjust government, the opposition, in demonstrating that this freedom is now a permanent right, has already claimed victory.
Highlighted by willrich
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