How Killing the Internet Helped Revolutionaries

An anonymous reader writes "In a widely circulated American Political Science Association conference paper, Yale scholar Navid Hassanpour argues that shutting down the internet made things difficult for sustaining a centralized revolutionary movement in Egypt. But, he adds, the shutdown actually encouraged the development of smaller revolutionary uprisings at local levels where the face-to-face interaction between activists was more intense and the mobilization of inactive lukewarm dissidents was easier. In other words, closing down the internet made the revolution more diffuse and more difficult for the authorities to contain." As long as we're on the subject, reader lecheiron points out news of research into predicting revolutions by feeding millions of news articles into a supercomputer and using word analysis to chart national sentiment. So far it's pretty good at predicting things that have already happened, but we should probably wait until it finds something new before contacting Hari Seldon.

Comments

Re:Just give it a little thought

[hairyfeet]

Well there are plenty out there that don't vote because they know its pointless which it really is. I know every time i'm just throwing my vote away by voting green, but what choice do I have? you have Obama, the biggest spineless sellout the dems have had since Jimmy "I ain't got no backbone!" Carter, and the reps look like they'll run Perry, which is REALLY scary, as the man actually makes dubya look like a good leader. have you SEEN the stats for Texas under Perry? Yikes.

Oh and sadly the tea party WAS grass roots, but ever since the "tea party express" or the teabagger central as i call it, took over it has been the Koch bros all the way. All you have to do is follow the money and look at the platform, anything the Koch bros want? the teabagger central is pushing.

So I say lay back and enjoy the ride. be sure to have canned food and cash money, and if you are in an area that allows them a gun would probably be a safe bet, as the country she'll be going under, i give it maybe 10 years tops. You can't send all the jobs overseas, allow free trade with countries that don't allow the same for US goods (like China and soon thanks to Nobama we'll have "The NAFTA of the Pacific") and even Nobama's fabled "green jobs" are going to China and the third world, as witnessed by that solar panel plant that just closed here to set up there. Why? They can't compete with two dollars a day labor and Chinese subsidized utilities and housing.

So if you want to see what will happen in 10 to 15 years? it'll either be the USSR or Libya. Either the old guard will quietly give up (fat chance me thinks) or like Libya when it all collapses and a truckload of money won't buy a dozen eggs people will be raiding the national guard and making technicals. Sadly I'm betting on the second one, as one thing we have seen lately the rich here have a real "let them eat cake!" attitude. But the poor outnumber them by over 100,000 to 1 and that number is growing by the minute as the middle class is wiped out. So enjoy while you can, because we can't print free money forever.