from FAZ.NET, 7th 3. 2011
Tweets sent dictators overthrown?
The role of social networks like Facebook in the roll-over in North Africa and the Middle East is overrated: they are an important tool, nothing more, however - even if cyber-utopians not like to admit.
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Twitter 
It was very entertaining to-follow, as the cyber-utopians - in their eyes, the digital Werkzeuge der sozialen Netzwerke wie Facebook und Twitter gesellschaftliche Umstürze aus dem Nichts heraufbeschwören können – miteinander darum wetteiferten, einen weiteren Nagel in den Sarg des Cyber-Realismus zu schlagen. Diese realistische Position in Bezug auf die digitale Welt vertrete ich in meinem Buch „The Net Delusion“ („Der Netztrug“). Ich argumentiere dort, dass die digitalen Werkzeuge schlicht und einfach, nun ja, Werkzeuge sind und ein Umbruch auch heute nur durch eine Vielzahl von Bemühungen von politischen Institutionen und Reformbewegungen zustande kommt.
Da die Cheerleader des Internets den Cyber-Realismus nicht begraben und selbst can not get out of the story remained, they have no other choice than to tinker with a straw man out of the cyber-realistic position: As said this, the Internet is irrelevant. This is obviously a cartoon that is inconsistent with those passages of my book in line, in which it explicitly states, to name just one example, that "the Internet is important and revolutionary, as it believed the recent theories of his biggest supporters "make.
air from the dream cyberutopischen
You could also the ongoing persecution of the author Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point "," Blink: The Power of Thinking ") directing. Increasingly, one tries to draw Gladwell as a kind of new Luddites, because he dared to let the air out of the cyberutopischen dream. In an online chat, the Gladwell conducted shortly after his pertinent criticism of the idea of a "Twitter Revolution" of last October on the website of the New Yorker, "he said as many as three times explicitly, the Internet can be an effective tool for political his conversion, when grassroots organizations use of it and do not isolated individuals.
easy to show that the protests in the Arab world with the help of the Internet made public, and even organized caught, thus not in the least to Gladwell's argument (with which I, but this way only, not all agree bin). In order to refute them, would the cyber-utopians show that the protests were not through networks of grassroots activists - with leaders and hierarchies - has been performed, which had attached before the outbreak of the riots (online or offline or both, form) close links.
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Does the technology have a key role?
What we know so far, but that's close sets. Such were the main organizers of the Egyptian Facebook movement while not revolutionary leader in the traditional sense. How could it be otherwise noted, given the dismal track record in turning such leading figures, the former president Hosni Mubarak in aid Washington has? And yet they acted as guides and took a strategic approach by, or even a few days appeared before the protests - no different than the leader of a revolutionary cell would have done.
also celebrated in the press cooperation between Tunisian and Egyptian cyber-activists did not take place in virtual space. Within a week I appeared unannounced in May 2009 in two (independently run) workshops in Cairo, in which exchanged present in person bloggers, techies and activists from both countries on approaches and tips to circumvent the censorship. One of the participants was the Tunisian blogger Amamou Slim, who is now Secretary of State for Youth and Sport in the Tunisian transitional government. One of these events was financed by the U.S. government, the other from George Soros' Open Society Foundations "(with whom I am in contact).
There were many meetings, not only in Cairo but also in Beirut and Dubai. Most of them were never made public, because this is the safety of many of its participants would have imperiled - but punish them lies the idea that the protests had been organized by randomly got into it people who do something aimlessly online. Those who believe that these networks were purely virtual and spontaneously knows just nothing about the recent history of cyber-activism in North Africa and the Middle East - all Not to mention the sometimes successful, but usually fruitless support from Western governments, foundations and companies, which he has received.
In the soup respectively onto iPads spat
The development of this activist network trace would require more than just to study their Facebook profiles, it would be a laborious research - on the phone and archives - which does not do overnight. One reason why we are still talking about the role of Twitter and Facebook, is that the immediate aftermath of the Arab spring let's so little other conversation, a thorough policy analysis of the causes of these revolutions years will need. This points to the real reason why so many cyber-utopians were angry at Gladwell: In a blog addendum to his article, which appeared as the Tahrir Square was lined with crowds, he ventured the suggestion that the injustices that the Demonstrators have taken to the streets deserve far more attention than the means by which they organized themselves preferably. He had spat in the network gurus in the soup - or worse, on their iPads, and they responded as well.
Still had Gladwell right: Today is the role of the telegraph in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 - not unlike the cassette recorder in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the fax machine in the revolutions of 1989 - at best a handful of academic interest and for hardly anyone else, the technology fetishism is the most immediately after a revolution, sounds but then after a short time. announced in his bestseller "The Magic Lantern of 1990 Timothy Garton Ash, that" Tele revolutions at the end of the twentieth century, all the revolutions in Europe "- but in hindsight does the role of television but bad secondary.
Revolutions are never spontaneous
If the history Twitter and Facebook in twenty years bring a similar fate? In all likelihood, yes. The fascination that trigger technology-driven representations of political change now will fade: The actual history of successful popular uprisings tends to move generally attributed to the key technology in the background. By highlighting the liberating role of the rapporteur of the technical means and downplay the role of human action, they enable a sense of pride in their own contribution to the events. Finally, the argument would have been such a spontaneous uprising without Facebook is not crowned with success - Silicon Valley which belongs the lion's share of earnings. Of course, if the survey was not spontaneous, and their leaders took advantage of Facebook, just because there is all the world, the story sounds not so glamorous.
offer Second, social media - because they are "social" are - for the tongue-ready overestimate their own importance in Verkünderton on. 1989 employed the Faxhersteller not an army of lobbyists, and the fax users felt sich diesen klobigen Geräten nicht derart verbunden wie die Facebooknutzer von heute ihrem allmächtigen Netzwerk.
F acebook-Konto abmelden, etwas mehr Aufwand treiben
Vielleicht bringen die übersteigerten Ansprüche, die gegenwärtig im Westen für die sozialen Medien reklamiert werden, nur ein westliches Schuldgefühl darüber zum Ausdruck, so viel Zeit mit ebendiesen Medien zu verschwenden. Wenn es dazu beiträgt, in Nordafrika Demokratie zu verbreiten, kann es schließlich nicht so schlecht sein, seine Zeit damit zu vertrödeln, dass man seine Freunde „anstupst“. Die jüngste Technologiegeschichte legt freilich nahe, dass es mit der Popularität von Facebook und Twitter vorbei sein wird, sobald das Online-Publikum weiterzieht. Heute erröten die Technogurus bei der Erinnerung an die akademischen Konferenzen, die einmal zur „MySpace-Revolution“ abgehalten wurden.
Drittens sind die Menschen, die uns aus erster Hand über die Proteste berichten, zu enthusiastisch für eine ausgeglichene Sicht. Könnte es sein, dass der Google-Marketingleiter Wael Ghonim, der zum Gesicht des ägyptischen Aufstands wurde und ein eigenes Buch über die „Revolution announced 2.0 "has exaggerated the role of technology and at the same time playing down his own role in the preparation of the protests? The former employee of Radio Free Europe and Voice of America has to first find the non-assumption, Western radio broadcasts that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is not to say that all these means of communication have played in those decades ago overturns not matter - but that the parties directly involved do not always have to assess how it came to these cataclysmic events. If they are not to a future pesky Bars and discussions with the graying slightly eccentric to the last of the Mohicans glorious Faxzeiten of 1989 or the true believers condemn the Radio Free Europe-revolution do, then, the cyber-utopians log out of our day of their Facebook accounts and a bit more effort.
from English by Michael Adrian .
Evgeny Morozov recently the book "The Net Delusion," published and is a visiting lecturer at Stanford University
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