Slashdot Mirror
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.
If you're like me you don't generally like the government I got loads of complaints with the state of the government in the USA but do I really do much about it? No I'm too busy with my job, friends and other stuff. Plus lets face it things aren't that bad here despite all the dire stuff they put on the news. But if the government suddenly turned off my porn and tv shows plus slashdot and various other sites I habitually use I'd be up in arms pounding on my congressman's door maybe even joining a riot if the mood was right.
If some supercomputer analyzed my public writings, it would recognize that I've been keeping the pitchfork I made out of the old plowshare handy by the back door for some time now. I ate the oxen quite a while back when Monsanto took my fields away, so it's not like I had any other use for it.
My bet is it would predict a revolution in the US every couple of years... probably every 2 years... right around election time...
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
It's been recognized for generations that people won't rebel against a government for light reasons. As long as people have food and jobs to keep them busy, they'll tolerate quite a bit of oppression.
And once oppressive governments try to use such predictions to suppress revolutions, the people will learn to adapt and alter their public speech. For instance, after decades of government control of the media, Egyptians were able to use social networking to vent their frustrations. As governments try to suppress/infiltrate social networking, people will turn to other strategies.
And back then, when Ben Ali was still here and the riots started taking more and more regions, the gov't had the great idea of forbidding people from going to places where they might have the silly idea of "forming" a riot. Thus, football games were stopped, university courses cancelled...
Predictably, those who used to watch football every Sunday suddenly had nothing to do, and those who were preparing for exams found themselves in holidays... Why not join the riots?