Iranian internet

Clay Shirky describes Iran's green movement as a social media rorschach test. If you believe that social media helps democratic movements than you will highlight the power of mobile video. Without mobile video, Neda never would have become a symbol. If you believe that social media helps crush democratic movements than you will cite how the regime used crowd-sourcing to track down green protestors.

Alec takes the debate about the internet's role in promoting freedom and democracy to its logical conclusion. The US is now helping provide the internet to people in Iran using satellites, but ever since the Revolutionary Guard nationalized Iran's information technology infrastructure, the State has had the upper hand. The Guard can cut off everyone in Iran from the internet if it wants to and the only repercussion would be people's dissatisfaction from losing internet access.

This leads me to believe that the only long-term way for the United States to promote freedom and democracy using the internet is to make shutting down the internet a more risky strategy than allowing organizers to use it. More specifically, when enough Iranians make their living online then shutting down the internet will create more internal unrest than any movement. Interestingly, this conclusion leads back to Jaron Lanier's "You Are Not A Gadget" in which he details that the current architecture of the internet financially empowers those who control the server over those that populate the bazaar.

Of course, the TurboVote perspective brings everything back to voting. The green movement got started because so many people felt that their votes had been stolen. And until the Iranian public trusts that their votes won't be stolen again, the regime will never regain its legitimacy. Since the regime is unlikely to institute mobile election monitoring, or other trust building measures, it is likely that the relationship between the people and the regime has fundamentally changed.