*He's commenting on that Morozov-Shirky discussion, but there is so much of interest going on here that I must quote him.
http://www.edge.org/discourse/digitalpower.html
(...)
"The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena. There are some nice mob effects, but the intensity of the failures is more profound than the delights of the successes. A flash mob in San Francisco in which people suddenly hold a pose and disperse doesn't compensate for a flash mob in Philadelphia in which people are beaten up.
"In the USA, the rise of these tools has corresponded to a truly loony period of reality disconnect and rancor. When you bring digital tools into a system in a crude way, you risk infecting elements of that system with a binary character. Either you're all in or you're all out. Each politician becomes a bit.
"While American politics has often been nasty and nutty, at least there was generally a modicum of statistical noise in the system to blur the lines. Of course the Web 2.0 tools might not be primarily to blame. There are other things going on, like the decline of the cultural/ethnic majority and the rise of a competing world power, but at the very least it is clear that these tools aren't saving us from ourselves.
"Governments oppress people, but so do mobs. You need to avoid both to make progress.
"There no guarantee that a revolution will make things better, and a great many revolutions have made things worse. After all, the present Iranian regime is a revolutionary one, as is the one in China.
"Revolutions with democratic outcomes are probably ones in which the mob dynamics during fateful formative moments were tempered to some critical degree- something which didn't happen in either the Chinese or Iranian revolutions. Mobs and dictators were made for each other, and when mobs appear, dictators will soon flourish. (((A very Republican thing to say, but then again, a republic is a res publica, and not just a bunch of angry guys running around in public.)))
"We hear a lot more about Chinese dissidents oppressed by the government than about dissidents, adulterers, animal abusers, and others in China who are hunted down by online mobs. (((The "human flesh search engine," and, yeah, I think they deserve a whole lot of political attention, along with sex-scandal "centipede" conspiracies. There aren't many political groupings that tremendously attack both a President of the United States and a Pope.))) The two phenomena are connected, and should be treated as equally important threats. Unfortunately, software designs derived from those originating in Silicon Valley are supporting the mob-side of China.
"Wouldn't it be nice if we in Silicon Valley had developed and promoted software that was clearly improving democracy at home? Then we could export that stuff!" (...)
