Il mitico Ted lancia il suo social network, Ted Conversations. Si postano domande, si lanciano temi di discussione, si propongono idee da sviluppare.
L’interfaccia e l’ambiente che si trova nelle Ted Conversations non invita a perdere tempo: piuttosto invita ad approfondire e solidarizzare intellettualmente con gli altri.
Grande esordio. Fin dalla partenza della piattaforma ci sono grandissimi interventi, da Morozov a Zuckerman a O’Reilly.
Un’idea interessante: le discussioni hanno una data di scadenza. Ci sono amministratori volontari. Le regole sono molto semplici.
Qualche esempio?
Zeid Abdul-Hadi propone questa domanda:
To what extent has social media contributed to the spreading of the
People’s revolutions and call for Freedom in Tunisia & Egypt?
The
past month has seen unprecedented events in history in the Middle East
that hasn’t been possible to achieve in 30 years, and this is partly
due to the rise of the internet and the new means of communication at
the disposal of people, and in particular social media, such as Twitter
& Facebook, which has allowed people to rally for a common cause in
large numbers in a way that would’ve been impossible before. In
addition, the rise of the use of the internet and social media has
enabled people to see everything clearly and to know about everything
from different media sources, so no government can fool its people
anymore.
Evgeny Morozov risponde:
2 days ago: The
governments of Tunisia and Egypt were overthrown in part because they
did not pay enough attention to the power of the Internet. How else to
explain the fact that the Egyptian government took little effort to
crack down on the Facebook groups opposing it in the several months
preceding the protests?
Social media are good for publicizing protests – but, as they are
social by definition, they are also easy to track and monitor,
subjecting protesters to risks they may not even be aware of. What we
are going to see in the months to come is more governments learning the
tricks of open-source intelligence gathering to avoid being caught off
guard like Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak.
Ethan Zuckerman risponde:
2 days ago: I’ve
heard at least three ideas for why social media could be important in
the Egyptian/Tunisian context, and I think there’s a fourth idea that’s
not been widely discussed yet.
Idea 1 – the secret information theory
A number of commentators have suggested that information released by
Wikileaks and circulated via social media helped foment frustration in
Tunisia and mobilize the demonstrations. While it’s true that Tunisia
worked very hard to suppress the Wikileaks information, the information
revealed wasn’t especially secret. I think that, while the idea of the
Internet as a platform for unblockable secrets is very appealing, I
think there may be fewer secrets than we imagine in our mediated age,
and more channels than the internet.
Idea 2 – command and coordination
The New York Times has run several stories looking at how groups like
the April 6 Youth Movement and Kefaya used the internet to coordinate
protests in Egypt. While there’s some truth to these stories, it’s
worth noting that the protests continued during an internet shutdown.
Yes, the internet is a great tool for organizing protest, but it’s also
an open, public channel, not always the best place to plan a revolution.
Idea 3 – amplifying voices
Protests in Sidi Bouzid would have received little media attention
without two technologies – Facebook and Al Jazeera. AlJ used videos
posted on Facebook to report on the protests to the rest of Tunisia and
the rest of the world. As protests spread through Tunisia, they
inspired the world as a whole.
the one I’ve heard little about
Idea 4 – participatory governance
Now that leaders have been overthrown in Egypt and Tunisia, what’s
next? There needs to be a channel for youth – the folks who led
protests – to influence the new process of governance. What will be
really exciting is if figures like Wael Ghonim can use Facebook to get
ideas from the youth he now represents in conversations with the new
Egyptian government.
E così via…
Commenta