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Social studies scholar Evgeny Morozov may occasionally be cranky and stylistically conflicted, but his original arguments provide refreshing insights. He debunks nearly religious beliefs about the intrinsically positive power of the Internet and total information access. Morozov demonstrates how propagating this optimistic view of the web drowns out more subtle positions and keeps governmental and societal attention focused on less meaningful activities. getAbstract recommends this worthy polemic to those engaged in cyberculture, those trying to decipher cultural change, and those dedicated to understanding and promoting freer societies.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 6, 2011
The premise on this book is Cynical look at freedom on the Internet world wide.. I am still reading.. but I would not say I agree with the authors views of events
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Morozov is debunking the notion that internet access = internet freedom. In fact, he tells us that internet "freedom" is a term with no meaning in the conventional sense since it implies that users are free to say what they like and use the technology for their own ends. But, his argument goes, if one user (an authoritarian regime, say, with a reason to dampen enthusiasm for democratic reforms) controls any points of internet access, or subverts the open sharing of ideas on social networking platforms to their own ends, "freedom" immediately becomes compromised.
Morozov compiles an extraordinary collection of examples from around the world of how this is happening now, and challenges (especially U.S.) policy makers to acknowledge that funding bloggers or promoting social networking sites is not an adequate response in and of itself to authoritarian regimes and/or dictatorships. He argues persuasively that U.S. Secretary of State Clinton's speeches on Internet freedom do not adequately address the issues of authoritarian control, and suggests that only by closely aligning stated country-specific political policies with the promotion of Internet access in these same countries will produce the results the U.S. government seeks.
In other words, we have to stop talking out of both sides of our face. We can't suppose that financing a corrupt regime on the one hand and supplying financing for anti-regime bloggers on the other is going to produce creditable results. And when it comes to Internet freedoms, one size does not fit in all cases. Some governments have embraced the Internet revolution so thoroughly that they are closely intertwined in the social networking sites, uncovering dissidents and following their adherents. Some have only the crudest knowledge of and reaction to social networking: witness the Internet shutdown for several days during the protests against Egyptian government.
At first I thought Morozov was arguing for international regulation of the Internet and perhaps even self-policing by internet services providers. But I realized he is far too realist to imagine that international regulation (were it even possible) would be practically effective and that asking internet service providers to police is even more frightening than the authoritarian regimes he opposes. But his contention that the Internet too often "empowers the strong and disempowers the weak" is probably true. However, adding even fractionally to the access of the disempowered means proportionally huge gains in their knowledge and connectivity with ideas and others sharing their beliefs. As messy and inadequate a poorly-regulated Internet may be, it has undoubtedly had some effect on information dissemination to good effect. It is now up to those shackled masses to bend their minds to the task of building better governance than that which they have had to suffer in the past.
Anonymous
Posted September 14, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted June 7, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
More About This Textbook
Overview
The revolution will be Twittered!” declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after protests erupted in Iran. Yet for all the talk about the liberalizing force of the internet, regimes in Iran and China are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, authoritarian regimes are effectively using the internet to suppress free speech and democracy. What’s more, the latest research shows that greater access to information pacifies a population as much as it incites it to revolution. If we in the West are to promote liberal ideals, we’ll have to do more than fund Facebook.
In this book, blogger and social commentator Evgeny Morozov tackles these issues with relentless energy and analytical savvy. Marshalling a compelling set of case studies, he shows why we must stop thinking of the internet and social media as instant cures for repression, and how, in some cases, they can even threaten democracy.
Editorial Reviews
Library Journal
Morozov (contributing editor, Foreign Policy), currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University, here examines the evolving role of the Internet in activism, dissent, and authoritarian regimes. He investigates the impact of a range of media on social revolution and activism from television in East Germany to Twitter during Iran's Green Revolution, intertwining that analysis with discussion of the ways governments are able to use the Internet for surveillance of political activity, propaganda dissemination, and censorship. In his complex examination, he analyzes the effect of the proliferation of available entertainment and access to consumer goods on the potential for political activity, arguing that opening societies to further consumerism and to Western cultural media has in some ways deterred political activism. Morozov's argument that the West conflates democratization with consumerism uncovers a critique of the West here for its complacent belief that the Internet and supposed freedom of information is a certain pathway to democratization. VERDICT Highly recommended and likely to be popular with political observers, policy wonks, activists, information junkies, and academics. [See also The Offensive Internet, reviewed on page opposite.—Ed.]—Candice A. Kail, Columbia Univ. Libs., New YorkKirkus Reviews
In his debut, Foreign Policy contributing editor Morozov pulls the Internet into sharp focus, exposing the limits of its inner logic, its reckless misuse and the dangerous myopia of its champions.
The author provides a damaging assessment of domestic and foreign Internet policy that remains entertaining despite its dour warnings. As the Internet becomes more widely available in remote corners of the world, writers Morozov, it becomes harder to regulate. Even without a blueprint or common grammar, policymakers, social critics and social scientists tend to embrace online communication as an emancipatory political mechanism that promotes democracy. Everywhere, commentators focus on the amazing revolutionary potential of the Internet to broadcast political struggle, rather than the political struggle itself. In 2009, thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran to protest what they saw as the fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Armed with smartphones and Twitter accounts, protestors were able to reach the world in a matter of minutes, and images of police brutality quickly reached the Internet-surfing world via Facebook and Twitter. When the initial exuberance behind the "Twitter revolution" waned, the Iranian government used the same social-networking sites, even YouTube, to identify and arrest would-be insurrectionists. As the Internet proves ineffective in the struggle for global democratic revolution, it expertly transforms entire populations into passive consumers of commercial mass media, revealing one of the most fundamental of political problems: motivation. Assuming that the Internetcanbe regulated, how can it promote global democracy while the world's connected millions are surfing YouTube for funny cat videos? It's a hopeless battle, but despite the immeasurable barriers to Internet-driven democracy, Morozov still believes the Internetcanbe used to promote democracy, as long as new policies are unbiased, realistic and cognizant of the connections between the Internet, local political contexts and foreign-policy agendas. Easier said than done.
A serious consideration of the online world that sparkles with charm and wit.
Lee Siegel
As Evgeny Morozov demonstrates in The Net Delusion, his brilliant and courageous book, the Internet's contradictions and confusions are just becoming visible through the fading mist of Internet euphoria. Morozov is interested in the Internet's political ramifications. "What if the liberating potential of the Internet also contains the seeds of depoliticization and thus dedemocratization?" he asks. The Net delusion of his title is just that. Contrary to the "cyberutopians," as he calls them, who consider the Internet a powerful tool of political emancipation, Morozov convincingly argues that, in freedom's name, the Internet more often than not constricts or even abolishes freedom.—The New York Times
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Meet the Author
Evgeny Morozov is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and a regular contributor to Newsweek, The Economist, The International Herald Tribune, Prospect, Boston Review, and other publications. He was the 2009-2010 Yahoo! fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a 2008-2009 Open Society fellow at the Open Society Institute.