Foreign Policy runs a regular feature titled “Think Again,” in which one or another contributor addresses an issue he deems has been misunderstood.

Foreign Policy

runs a regular feature titled “Think Again,” in which one or another

contributor addresses an issue he deems has been misunderstood by otherwise

knowledgeable people. Each section deals with some assertion that the

author seeks to correct or clarify; the intent is to bring a skeptical

eye to widely held views on matters of global significance, which is

a fine thing to attempt when the writer in question is a competent essayist

and thinker rather than some other, lesser thing.

In

the May/June issue, FP contributing editor Evgeny Morozov takes to “Think

Again” in an effort to bring clarity to the general subject of the

Internet as it pertains to freedom and representative government. The

first section of the article asks whether the assertion “The Internet

Has Been a Force for Good” is true. The answer, Morozov says, is no,

and he begins to explain why the answer is no-rather than yes or “I

don’t know”-by reminding us of the hopes expressed by web enthusiasts

back in the early days of connectivity, occasionally in their own words.

“The Internet was lauded as the ultimate tool to foster tolerance,

destroy nationalism, and transform the planet into one great wired global

village,” he reminds us.

Something

seems to have gone awry, though, and fifteen years later tolerance remains

unfostered, nationalism is still in existence, and our planet is hardly

a wired global village. Morozov does cite one actual claim made long

ago by the pro-Internet crowd, here quoting the 1994 manifesto “A

Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age,” which, as he notes, promised the

advent of “electronic neighborhoods bound together not by geography

but by shared interests.” This is an odd claim to cite as representative

of unfulfilled hopes, considering that it appears to have been fulfilled

if we observe that we do indeed now have online communities made up

of people “bound together not by geography but by shared interests,”

including blogs such as Daily Kos, user-driven discussion sites such

as Reddit, and thousands of other such things. If Morozov has a different

definition in mind, he has kept it secret from us.

Incidentally,

this marks one of the two occasions in the entire article on which Morozov

bothers to quote any of the assertions he ascribes to his opponents,

and on neither occasion are we treated to anything so bulky as an entire

sentence-but then print magazines are subject to space constraints.

Limited by his medium, Morozov is forced to continue here by merely

summarizing an assertion by Nicholas Negroponte, who “dramatically

predicted in 1997 that the Internet would shatter borders between nations

and usher in a new era of world peace” or at any rate stated something

approximate to that.

Whatever

Negroponte said in 1997, it was apparently wrong. “The Internet as

we know it has now been around for two decades,” Morozov reminds us,

“and it has certainly been transformative.… But just as earlier

generations were disappointed to see that neither the telegraph nor

the radio delivered on the world-changing promises made by their most

ardent cheerleaders, we haven’t seen an Internet-powered rise in global

peace, love, and liberty.” I wouldn’t know how to measure the degree

of global love, much less to what extent one should attribute any change

in such a thing to the Internet. This puts me at a disadvantage when

dealing with Morozov, who seems to have had a head start on this, so

I will concede the point, which he hammers home by noting that the Internet

has facilitated “the increased global commerce in protected species.”

Meanwhile, a group of Serbians have been “turning to Facebook to organize

against gay rights” while a group of Saudi Arabians are supposed to

be setting up some sort of online version of their Promotion of Virtue

and the Prevention of Vice squad. All in all, “Many of the transnational

networks fostered by the Internet arguably worsen-rather than improve-the

world as we know it.” Why this necessarily leads to the conclusion

that the Internet has not been a force for good is left unaddressed,

but there is: a full-page picture of a hand holding a mouse on the facing

page.

Having

accomplished whatever it is that just happened, Morozov moves on to

address more specific assertions such as, “Twitter Will Undermine

Dictators.” This, it turns out, is wrong. “Tweets don’t overthrow

governments; people do,” Morozov begins, adding that social network

sites have proven “both helpful and harmful to activists operating

from inside authoritarian regimes.” Again, one expects to see Morozov

at least attempt to make the case that they have been more harmful than

helpful, but he does not seem to consider this a productive line of

inquiry; he is busy forgetting what it is that he had set out to prove-that

it is wrong to assert that “Twitter Will Undermine Dictators”-and

has instead apparently just decided to make the case that Twitter has

not managed to actually overthrow any dictators after its few

years of existence. “Neither the Iranian nor the Burmese regime has

crumbled under the pressure of pixelated photos of human rights abuses

circulated on social networking sites,” he points out.

Not

only has Twitter failed to take down either of the two regimes Morozov

lists, but one of those regimes has attempted to use the service for

its own ends. “Indeed, the Iranian authorities have been as eager

to take advantage of the Internet as their green-clad opponents. After

last year’s protests in Tehran, Iranian authorities launched a website

that publishes photos from the protests, urging the public to identify

the unruly protestors by name.” We are not told how effective this

turned out to be or why this necessarily cancels out the effectiveness

of Twitter in organizing the protests to begin with or how the fact

that dictators use websites shows that they are not being undermined

by the use of Twitter. The fellow’s talent is being wasted in socio-political

commentary when he could be writing mystery novels.

“Take

the favorite poster child of digital utopians,” Morozov continues,

citing a random example to which some digital utopians may occasionally

refer. “In early 2008 a Facebook group started by a 33-year-old Columbian

engineer culminated in massive protests, with up to 2 million people

marching in Bogota’s streets to demonstrate against the brutality

of Marxist FARC rebels. (A New York Times article about the protests

gushed: ‘Facebook has helped bring public protest to Colombia, a country

with no real history of mass demonstrations.’)” We might have been

fooled into taking this as a factual assessment of what was going on

in Colombia had The New York Times refrained from gushing

about it, which is a dishonest rhetorical trick that we should be thankful

to Morozov for pointing out to us. “However, when the very same ‘digital

revolution’ last September tried to organize a similar march against

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, they floundered.” Facebook, then, cannot

always be used to effectively undermine dictators in neighboring countries;

pass it on.

“Internet

enthusiasts argue that the Web has made organizing easier,” Morozov

continues. “But this is only partially true,” which is to say that

it is easier only to the extent that it is easier. “Taking full advantage

of online organizing requires a well-disciplined movement with clearly

defined goals, hierarchies, and operational procedures.” I would retort

that such things are necessary in order to take full advantage of anything,

and there is nothing of which anyone has ever taken full advantage,

but nonetheless these imperfect entities do manage to accomplish things.

Again, Morozov was supposed to be showing that Twitter doesn’t undermine

dictators, not that it frees protester organizers from the necessity

of goals and procedures.

Our

correspondent next dismisses the myth that “Google Defends Internet

Freedom,” noting that the company does so “only when convenient.”

I’m not aware of anyone who argues otherwise other than Google’s

public relations people, but at any rate Morozov manages to shoot them

down.

Next

up on the chopping block is the claim that “The Internet Makes Governments

More Accountable.” “Not necessarily,” Morozov retorts, noting

that “even when the most detailed data get released, it does not always

lead to reformed policies,” here citing an example of a single occasion

on which the Internet did not make a particular government more accountable,

thereby refuting the argument that “The Internet Always Makes Every

Government More Accountable in Every Way,” which no one has ever made.

True accountability, he adds, “will require building healthy democratic

institutions and effective systems of checks and balances. The Internet

can help, but only to an extent.” That all help is inherently a matter

of extent and not entirety does not prevent Morozov from throwing out

this redundant qualifier by virtue of its perceived use in minimizing

the fact that the Internet can indeed be of help in building or reforming

such institutions.

The

Internet and the claims made on its behalf merit skeptical scrutiny.

Skepticism, though, is more than contrarianism in the face of a given

claim, and it is wholly incompatible with the style of argument Morozov

gives: a haphazard mixture of anecdotal evidence, selective amnesia,

non-sequiters, and loaded terminology. When publications “gush”

factual assertions and opponents are twice characterized as “cheerleaders”

in the space of a single essay, it is not difficult to determine that

the essayist in question is seeking shortcuts to persuasion. When an

essayist sets out to debunk an assertion by using anecdotal evidence

that is weaker than the contrary anecdotal evidence he seeks to nullify,

shifting from attacking the original assertion to attacking a broader

assertion that no one has made, we ought not be surprised that he has

resorted to such shortcuts. We may even be inclined to allow these things

as a handicap if we are the magnanimous sort, which we are not.

The

Internet has not proven itself to be some surefire weapon against tyranny

or injustice or bad taste, but the same can be said for the written

word and, really, everything else. But aside from being wrong, arguments

to the effect that the last decade has shown the Internet to be a failure

as a tool of political change are almost beside the point if our intent

is to better understand what the Internet will look like in the future.

Had Morozov written a similar essay ten years ago, he would have been

arguing against the revolutionary efficacy of a landscape that is drastically

different from what we see today-one in which Facebook, Twitter, and

YouTube were as yet unknown. Ten years from now, new and entirely different

tools will be in use, and existing tools will be used in different ways.

The Internet will continue in its rapid evolution; the world in turn

will be tugged along in the wake of its influence, and the means of

human collaboration will continue to multiply just as they have for

the last decade and a half-which is to say, orders of magnitude faster

than ever before in human history in an environment of fast-increasing

social complexity. We have barely received a taste of the phenomena

with which we and our very dictators will be confronted in the coming

years.