The Obama campaign is now cited as a textbook example of how to harness the power of the web
Among the many memorable lines spoken in Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing is Vice President John Hoynes’s part throwaway, part facetious, part prophetic quip, “this just in: the internet is not a fad.”
In that moment, a fictional character spoke to millions of contemporary and future obsessives about the lasting durability of the web. Within ten years it would prove a force for democracy, spurring political engagement and, for some, revolution.
During that last decade, the web has developed a culture of its own. It defines the generation that inherited it and which now puts it to work. Indeed, for this generation, the modern marketplace is now online: it’s increasingly where people shop, bank, make plans for the weekend and in some cases even find a spouse.
The internet was a key component of the Obama campaign, and a catalyst for the Arab Spring. The web, so the argument goes, has given a global voice to the voiceless, and empowered ordinary people to do extraordinary things. From the uprisings of Iran in 2009 and Egypt in 2011, to the British government’s about-turn on forest privatisation, to the recent embarrassment of Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York, the role of the web in holding the powerful to account is self evident.
But for all its distribution of power and choice and its undeniable virtue, the web may not quite be the saviour and liberator of the masses. Some of the most ancient inequalities have been translated to the digital age, and in many cases deepened by it.
In Britain and around the world, the power of the web is disproportionately concentrated in the hands of educated elites, particularly in cities. Across Britain, 2m of the poorest children have no access to the web in their homes, while 9m British adults—largely the poor and elderly—have never used the internet at all (21 per cent because they lack confidence in their ability to do so). In the Middle East, only a third of the population has regular access to the web, and it’s the poorest that remain the most disconnected. Those digital inequalities echo across the world.
So while Twitter, Facebook and YouTube enable change, they are not in themselves a cause of that change. A comparative lack of access to the web in Tunisia, where only a third of the population is estimated to have an internet connection, and in Yemen and Syria, where under a fifth do, has not prohibited their protestors from building noisy and lasting coups d’état, using old-fashioned restlessness and word of mouth. In this respect, the Arab Spring is not a revolution of the web.
In 2011, global change will take various forms and will be powered by various means. But it is a combination of circumstance and injustice, not the web, that leads people to participate in politics. And as is so frequently the case, it is the urban middle classes, not those most economically oppressed, who are leading the way.
Among the many memorable lines spoken in Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing is Vice President John Hoynes’s part throwaway, part facetious, part prophetic quip, “this just in: the internet is not a fad.”
In that moment, a fictional character spoke to millions of contemporary and future obsessives about the lasting durability of the web. Within ten years it would prove a force for democracy, spurring political engagement and, for some, revolution.
During that last decade, the web has developed a culture of its own. It defines the generation that inherited it and which now puts it to work. Indeed, for this generation, the modern marketplace is now online: it’s increasingly where people shop, bank, make plans for the weekend and in some cases even find a spouse.
The internet was a key component of the Obama campaign, and a catalyst for the Arab Spring. The web, so the argument goes, has given a global voice to the voiceless, and empowered ordinary people to do extraordinary things. From the uprisings of Iran in 2009 and Egypt in 2011, to the British government’s about-turn on forest privatisation, to the recent embarrassment of Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York, the role of the web in holding the powerful to account is self evident.
But for all its distribution of power and choice and its undeniable virtue, the web may not quite be the saviour and liberator of the masses. Some of the most ancient inequalities have been translated to the digital age, and in many cases deepened by it.
In Britain and around the world, the power of the web is disproportionately concentrated in the hands of educated elites, particularly in cities. Across Britain, 2m of the poorest children have no access to the web in their homes, while 9m British adults—largely the poor and elderly—have never used the internet at all (21 per cent because they lack confidence in their ability to do so). In the Middle East, only a third of the population has regular access to the web, and it’s the poorest that remain the most disconnected. Those digital inequalities echo across the world.
So while Twitter, Facebook and YouTube enable change, they are not in themselves a cause of that change. A comparative lack of access to the web in Tunisia, where only a third of the population is estimated to have an internet connection, and in Yemen and Syria, where under a fifth do, has not prohibited their protestors from building noisy and lasting coups d’état, using old-fashioned restlessness and word of mouth. In this respect, the Arab Spring is not a revolution of the web.
In 2011, global change will take various forms and will be powered by various means. But it is a combination of circumstance and injustice, not the web, that leads people to participate in politics. And as is so frequently the case, it is the urban middle classes, not those most economically oppressed, who are leading the way.
