The Net Delusion - Evgeny Morozov [150]
The media is not helping either. Assuming they speak good English, those blogging for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt may simply have no intention of helping BBC or CNN to produce yet another report about the power of the blogosphere. That’s why the only power Western media cover is usually secular, liberal, or pro-Western. Not surprisingly, they tell us what we wanted to hear all along: Bloggers are fighting for secularism, liberalism, and Western-style democracy. This is why so many Western politicians fall under the wrong impression that bloggers are natural allies, even harbingers, of democracy. “If it’s true that there are more bloggers per head of population in Iran than any other country in the world, that makes me optimistic about the future of Iran,” said then UK’s foreign minister, David Miliband, while visiting Google’s headquarters. Why this should be the case—given that Iran’s conservative bloggers, who are often more hard-line than the government and are anything but a force for democracy, equality, and justice, are a formidable and rapidly expanding force in the Iranian blogosphere—is unclear. Chances are that Miliband’s advisors simply never ventured beyond a handful of pro-Western Iranian blogs that dominate much of the media coverage of the country. It’s hard to say what Miliband would make of certain groups of Chinese nationalists who, when they’re not making anti-Western or anti-CNN videos, are busy translating books by Western philosophers like Leibniz and Husserl.
Things get worse when Western policymakers start listening to bloggers in exile. Such bloggers often have a grudge against their home country and are thus conditioned to portray all domestic politics as an extension of their own struggle. Their livelihoods and careers often depend on important power brokers in Washington, London, and Brussels making certain assumptions about the Internet. Many of them have joined various new media NGOs or even created a few of their own; should the mainstream assumptions about the power of blogging shift, many of these newly created NGOs are likely to go under.
Not surprisingly, people who get grants to harness the power of the Internet to fight dictators are not going to tell us that they are not succeeding. It’s as if we’ve produced a few million clones of Ahmed Chalabi, that notoriously misinformed Iraqi exile who gave a highly inaccurate picture of Iraq to those who were willing to listen, and hired them to tell us how to fix their countries. Of course, the influence of exiles on foreign policy is a problem that most governments have had to deal with in the past, but bloggers, perhaps thanks to the inevitable comparisons to Soviet dissidents and the era of samizdat, are often not subjected to the level of scrutiny they deserve.
Why Some Data Need to Remain Foggy
It’s not just emotion and speed that threaten the integrity of policymaking. It’s also the growing availability and mobility of information. As mobile phones proliferate to the most remote corners of the world, data has become easier to gather. Previously disconnected local populations can now report on virtually anything, ranging from the effects of natural disasters to instances of human rights violations to election fraud. Suddenly, tragedy is more visible, and (or so the hope goes) it is more likely to be addressed.
Technology, indeed, can do wonders during natural disasters. Those most affected can use their mobile phones to text both their location and their problems. This information can then be aggregated and visualized on an online map. It may provide no direct relief to those directly affected by the disaster, but it can better inform humanitarian workers about the exact nature of the disaster and thus help in optimizing the allocation of scarce resources. One such tool, Ushahidi, was first designed to report on violence during the postelection crisis in Kenya and since then has been successfully deployed all over the world, including in the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in early 2010.
But the reason why many