Sienna Jackson / Roundup
Protests are raging across the Middle East and dissidence is stirring in China, swept up in a rising tide of empowerment and revolution within the people of the Eastern hemisphere.
Governments have begun their crackdowns, and people have died, but the unrest has only continued to snowball into a regime-toppling domino effect across the region.
This movement that we are seeing is tied to the concept of globalism as the new power model of international relations; the greater interconnectedness of every nation due to shared economic interests and most importantly, advancement in telecommunications.
The protests in Egypt, Iran and elsewhere have been characterized by the heavy involvement of the Internet to organize protests and quickly disseminate information throughout the rebel element of journalists, protesters and the watching eyes of people across the globe.
In the digital age, social movements have been backed by a digital infrastructure of IRC chat rooms, social networking sites and Wikis. This is the ‘how’ of rebellion; the means by which even the most disadvantaged of people can become empowered actors on the international stage.
Take Egypt for example. Even after the Mubarak regime managed to cut off a majority of the Egyptian public’s access to the Internet and other communications, protesters were still able to organize and plan.
This is due to the greater tech-savvy of the average Egyptian over their government, or the international Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that abetted in the Internet blackout.
Through ingenious methods like fax-to-Internet, IRC clients and Tor, any rebel element can bypass authoritarian restrictions to the web with a little know-how, know-how you can get if you know where to look.
The why’s of this great tide of unrest are tied to the Internet as well. The consequences of a free and unrestrained Internet are the consequences of giving all people everywhere an awareness of the rest of the world never enjoyed before.
If knowledge is power, then the Internet is the means to acquiring it. And if an empowered populace is the cornerstone of democracy, what could be better for the world at large than to have that means to empowerment free and accessible to all?
So how can people not revolt against their governments, when those governments seek to take away those peoples’ greatest resource?
The answer is that such suppression will no longer be tolerated by the suppressed, that international circumstance and technological advancement has given rise to a movement.
This movement is a new, digital take on an older motif:
“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law…”
That’s an excerpt from the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that’s the philosophical heart of this revolution.
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