The Net — Democratic Panacea Or Autocratic Tool?

Alex writes "On April 6, 10,000 protesters organized in Moldova against the nation's Communist leadership by utilizing new media like Twitter and Facebook, demonstrating the ever-increasing potential of the Internet as a democratic and liberating tool. But in the current Boston Review, Evgeny Morozov critiques the view that the internet will inevitably democratize autocratic regimes like China, Russia and Iran. He argues that the Net's democratic effects are not inherent, and that autocratic regimes have been successful in controlling electronic media to disseminate their ideology. Will the net ultimately spread American democracy, or just American entertainment?"

Comments

Re:How about other democracies?

[ShieldW0lf]

I wish I could moderate the article "-1 flamebait". A better term is "Western Liberal Democracy", that's all the good things that we all agree on, and yet isn't exclusive to a single country.

Doesn't the current state of the world challenge your faith that the things we've been agreeing on are good things even in the slightest?

If the things we believed in were actually good things, things would not be so incredibly fucked up. If western style democracy actually leads to good leadership and empowered people, how do you explain the psychopaths who currently wield power, the plummeting birth rates, the destruction of the family unit, the endless aggressive wars, the desperation in the population?

Maybe it's time to critically examine all these "good things" about our culture we take for granted. They sure do seem to have led us pretty fucking far astray...