By Evgeny Morozov

he only place where the Revolutions depend on people, not West is still unabashedly eager to promote democ- racy is in cyberspace. En- on , and the Internet thusiastic belief in the lib- e r a t i n g p o w e r o f technology, accompanied both promotes democracy and by the ir­resistible urge to Tenlist Silicon Valley start-ups in the thwarts it, says a foreign-policy global fight for freedom, is of grow- ing appeal to many policy makers. In fact, many of them are as upbeat scholar. Cyber-utopians be warned: about the revolutionary potential of the Internet as their colleagues in the Authoritarian regimes are adapting corporate sector were in the 1990s. We shouldn’t give the Internet too much credit, however, and we to the Internet age. should probably give it credit for

18 THE FUTURIST July-August 2011 some of the negative things that are ing the power of the federal govern- racy in the Middle East may succeed. happening. We shouldn’t be biased ment. Authoritarian regimes in Cen- But it will depend on how they work and just look at the brighter side. We tral Asia, for example, have been with the existing challenges. should be more critical in thinking actively promoting a host of e-gov- The revolts were driven by people about its impacts. ernment initiatives. who had economic grievances and The idea that the Internet favors Normally a regime that fights its were politically oppressed. They the oppressed rather than the op- own corruption has more legitimacy turned to the Internet to publicize pressor is marred by what I call with its own people. From that per- their grievances and their resistance. ­cyber-utopianism: a naïve belief in spective, I wouldn’t go so far as to The fact that new media and blogs the emancipatory nature of online say that the Internet is making the were present probably set a different communication that rests on a stub- government more accountable, but I tempo to the revolts. If the Internet born refusal to acknowledge its would say that it is making local of- were not around, the regime might downside. ficials more responsible. be tempted to crack down in a much Cyber-utopians ambitiously set The government may be eliminat- more brutal way. The revolts them- out to build a new and improved ing corruption in the provinces, selves would be taking a different United Nations, only to end up with making the people happier, but that shape, and they may have happened a digital Cirque du Soleil. Failing to doesn’t mean that they’re eliminat- three to six months later. anticipate how authoritarian govern- ing corruption at the top. So the dis- It’s hypothetical to say how to- ments would respond to the Inter- tribution of corruption might be day’s democratic revolutions would net, cyber-utopians did not predict changing. But I do think government have happened without the Internet, how useful the Internet would prove might use the Internet to solicit more but revolutions throughout history for purposes, how mas- citizen input. That won’t undermine are driven by cultural factors. The terfully dictators would use it for the government. It will bolster its le- events probably would have hap- surveillance, and how sophisticated gitimacy. pened differently and probably modern forms of Internet censorship It’s not paradoxical. The fact that would have turned out differently. would become. the government is soliciting their We have to entertain the possibility Fidel Castro’s Twitter page has opinions does not mean that the that these events could have been been around for a few years. But government is listening to them. It much more violent and taken much very few people in Cuba own com- wants to give the people the impres- more time if they hadn’t had the puters, because the Cuban govern- sion that it is listening to them. In publicity that they had thanks to the ment restricted the sale of computers some sense, it creates a semblance of Internet. to its population, so most of them democratic institutions. It’s all about But ultimately, a regime’s response just don’t have the equipment to creating a veneer of legitimacy. to a revolt depends on the regime, tweet. They don’t have Internet not on the Internet. Just because ­cafés. They do have a small blogging The Internet’s Role in people can tweet and blog doesn’t culture, a few bloggers who have to Middle Eastern Revolutions stop the Libyan government from in- be very careful. The government stituting a violent crackdown. modified the restrictions on comput- Digital activists in the Middle East In all, it’s hard to generalize based ers only a short while ago, so I can boast quite a few accomplish- on the future of the Internet. We wouldn’t expect Facebook or Twitter ments, particularly when it comes to don’t have a one-size-fits-all ap- to matter much in Cuba in the next documenting police brutality, but I proach to every country. We adapt five to ten years. don’t think the Internet will play our policies for each country. That’s Take a closer look at the blogo- much of a role in Middle Eastern how foreign policy works. But with spheres in almost any authoritarian democratic revolutions compared the Internet, we have a tendency to regime, and you are likely to dis- with other factors. The things to generalize that this must be how it cover that they are teeming with na- watch for are how the new leaders works everywhere, and that isn’t the tionalism and xenophobia. Things shape the new constitutions and case. don’t look particularly bright for the how they deal with the elements of kind of flawless the previous regimes. All those How Russia Handles the that some expect from the Internet’s things are far more important than Internet and Activism arrival. what happens online. I wouldn’t bet Likewise, bloggers uncovering that the Internet will be a great help. While civic activism—raising and publicizing corruption in local As for the extent to which these money for sick children and cam- governments could be—and are— new regimes become democracies— paigning to curb police corruption— easily coopted by higher-ranking it’s a wild guess for anyone, me in- is highly visible on the Russian In- politicians and made part of the anti- cluded. They have a chance, but out- ternet, it’s still entertainment and corruption campaign. The overall comes will depend upon many social media that dominate. In this impact on the strength of the regime factors, including internal policies respect, Russia hardly differs from in this case is hard to determine; the and external conflicts. I don’t buy the or countries in bloggers may be diminishing the into the cultural notion of Arabs not western Europe. The most popular power of local authorities but boost- being ready for democracy. Democ- Internet searches on Russian search

THE FUTURIST July-August 2011 19 engines are not for “What is Democ- racy?” or “how to protect human rights,” but for “What is love?” and “how to lose weight.” The Kremlin supports, directly or indirectly, a host of sites about poli- tics, which are usually quick to de- nounce the opposition and welcome every government initiative, but in- creasingly branches out into apoliti- cal entertainment. From the govern- ment’s perspective, it’s far better to The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of tainment through video-sharing keep young Russians away from Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov. sites to distract viewers from so- politics altogether, having them con- PublicAffairs. 2011. 408 pages. $27.95. cial and political issues. sume funny videos on Russia’s own n 2009, reports that dissidents Morozov debunks many version of YouTube, RuTube (owned in Iran were using Twitter widely held assumptions about by Gazprom, the country’s state- prompted many Western how politically repressive states owned energy behemoth), or on commentators to proclaim and their opposition both work. Russia.ru, where they might be ex- I that social media was fomenting He follows with advice for dem- posed to a rare ideological message a democratic Iranian revolu- ocratic lawmakers who want to as well. tion—only to be disap- help the dissidents. Many Russians are happy to com- pointed when the “revo- Pro-democracy ply, not least because of the high lution” fizzled and died. lawmakers must quality of such online distractions. New America Founda- engage with the The Russian authorities may be on to tion fellow ­Evgeny Mo- Internet, he says, something here: The most effective rozov attributes the but they must ob- system of Internet control is not the commentators’ mis- serve how it im- one that has the most sophisticated placed hopes to cyber­- p a c t s d i f f e r e n t and draconian censorship, but the utopianism, a wide- countries in different one that has no need for censorship s p re a d b u t n a ï v e w a y s a n d sh a p e whatsoever. expectation that the their policies accord- I don’t think there is anything Internet will em- ingly: What works in unique about Russia per se. It’s just power oppressed Tunisia might not that the government is smarter than peoples and ad- work in Burma. Also, the Egyptian government was about vance democracy. they must never treat how to use the Internet. The Egyp- According to Morozov, cyber- Web-based platforms tian government didn’t do anything utopians failed to anticipate that as substitutes for diligent, com- online. It didn’t engage in propa- authoritarian regimes would also mitted human activists who mo- ganda, deploy bloggers, or launch benefit from the Internet. In fact, bilize people to action in real life. cyberattacks. They missed the train. such police states as and The Net Delusion is a sobering I think the difference is that the Iran pay bloggers to spread assessment on the limits of Inter- people who built up the Russian In- prop­aganda and frequent social-­ net activism. It has practical ad- ternet ended up working for the networking sites to monitor dis- vice for policy makers and non- government. The Egyptian govern- sidents. Other states, such as profit activists across the globe. ment’s approach to the Internet was Russia, disseminate crass enter- —Rick Docksai very shallow, and it had to pay the price, eventually. Giving everyone a blog will not by itself increase the health of modern- day democracy; in fact, the possible side effects—the disappearance of Revolutions Require Training don’t think the view of this as being watchdogs, the end of serendipitous And Organization a spontaneous revolution was true. I news discovery, the further polariza- myself have been to several democ- tion of society—may not be the price The people who were instrumen- racy workshops in Egypt. I wouldn’t worth paying for the still unclear tal in making the Egyptian revolu- necessarily view these people as virtues of the blogging revolution. tion happen weren’t new to politics. ­atomized individuals. They have This does not mean, of course, that a Almost all of them were part of ex- been trained offline. smart set of policies—implemented isting political and social forces. But of course, you wouldn’t have by the government or private ac- They had had plenty of training and heard as much about it. Who’s pay- tors—won’t help to address those organization by various Western ing for those workshops? It’s the problems. foundations and governments. I U.S. government and U.S. founda-

20 THE FUTURIST July-August 2011 social and politi- cyber-realists would be constantly cal context is im- searching for highly sensitive points possible to tell of interaction between the two. without first get- They wouldn’t label all Internet ting a thorough activism as either useful or harmful. theoretical un- Instead, they would evaluate the de- derstanding of sirability of promoting such activism t h a t c o n t e x t . in accordance with their existing pol- Likewise, it is icy objectives. naïve to believe Cyber-realists wouldn’t search for that such a so- technological solutions to problems phisticated and that are political in nature, and they m u l t i p u r p o s e wouldn’t pretend that such solutions technology as are even possible. Nor would cyber- Web users fill the seats at an Internet café in Chengdou, China. t h e I n t e r n e t realists search for a bullet that could Despite the hopes of some democracy activists, the profusion of the could produce destroy —or even Internet in China has so far not undermined China’s authoritarian identical out- the next-to-silver bullet, for the uto- political system. As New America Foundation scholar Evgeny­ ­Morozov argues, authoritarian regimes around the world are adapt- comes—whether pian dreams that such a bullet can ing to—and sometimes prospering from—the spread of digital media. good or bad—in even exist would have no place in countries as di- their conception of politics. © PIERO CRUCIATTI / DREAMSTIME.COM verse as Belarus, Instead, cyber-realists would focus Burma, Kazakh- on optimizing their own decision- tions. In this sense, Facebook and stan, and Tunisia. There is so much di- making and learning processes, hop- Twitter are much better covers, be- versity across authoritarian regimes. ing that the right mix of bureaucratic cause the uprisings they enabled ap- I wouldn’t have much hope in the checks and balances, combined with peared to be spontaneous. It would be Internet in North Korea. First, it’s a the appropriate incentives structure, very misleading to suggest that all the country with some of the fewest In- would identify wicked problems be- connections forged by these activists ternet connections in the world. And fore they are misdiagnosed as tame are virtual. Revolution is much more second, average North Koreans have ones, as well as reveal how a particu- about building human networks. been brainwashed to such an extent lar solution to an Internet problem In 1996, when a group of high-pro- that you have serious psychological might disrupt solutions to other, file digerati took to the pages of challenges that you can’t overcome non-Internet problems. Wired magazine and proclaimed that just by using blogs and Twitter. It Most important, cyber-realists the “public square of the past” was would be much harder than for a would accept that the Internet is being replaced by the Internet, a country like Belarus, for example, poised to produce different policy technology that “enables average cit- where one-third of the country is on- outcomes in different environments izens to participate in national dis- line. Mobile phones might play a and that a policy maker’s chief ob- course, publish a newspaper, distrib- role in getting more information out. jective is not to produce a thorough ute an electronic pamphlet to the But it’s unlikely that Facebook or philosophical account of the Inter- world … while simultaneously pro- Twitter will play much of a role. net’s impacts on society at large, but, tecting their privacy,” many histori- Policy makers need to abandon rather, to make the Internet an ally in ans must have giggled. both cyber-utopianism and Internet- achieving specific policy objectives. From the railways, which Karl centrism, if only for the lack of ac- For them, the promotion of democ- Marx believed would dissolve complishment. What would take racy would be too important an ac- India’s caste system, to television, their place? What would an alterna- tivity to run it out of a Silicon Valley that greatest “liberator” of the tive, more down-to-earth approach lab. ❑ masses, there has hardly appeared a to policy making in the digital age— technology that wasn’t praised for let’s call it cyber-realism—look like? its ability to raise the level of public Cyber-realists would struggle to About the Author debate, introduce more transparency find space for the Internet in existing Evgeny Morozov is a con- into politics, reduce , and pillars. Instead of asking the highly tributing editor to Foreign transport us to the mythical global general, abstract, and timeless ques- Policy, visiting scholar at village. tion of “How do we think the Inter- , a Schwartz fellow at the New In virtually all cases, such high net changes closed societies?,” they America Foundation, and the hopes were crushed by the brutal would ask “How do we think the In- author of The Net Delusion: forces of politics, culture, and eco- ternet is affecting our existing poli- The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (Public nomics. Technologies tend to over- cies on country X?” Instead of oper- Affairs, 2011). E-mail ­evgeny.morozov@ promise and underdeliver, as least ating in the realm of the utopian and gmail.com. on their initial promises. the ahistorical, impervious to the This article draws from his book as well Which of the forces unleashed by ways in which developments in do- as an interview with staff editor Rick the Web will prevail in a particular mestic and foreign policies intersect, ­Docksai, which may be read at wfs.org.

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