Technology & Political Revolution

Technology & Political Revolution
How technology is being used to take down
governments and lift up the people

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 1

Intros

Revolutionairy Icon Game
Shout out
the name of
your favorite
revolutionary!

http://www.embassyofheaven.com/newslett/horse.gif


user participation. everyone shouts out
my favorite is named after a beastie boys song...

Zimbabwe


for the past decade, inﬂation has been spinning out of control
~$25 if converted but in dollars probably closer to $60

Zimbabwe


From January to December 2008, the money supply growth rose from 81,143% to 658 billion percent
in june more than 900 Quadrillion dollars - kept lobbing off zeros
made me an easy billionaire

Zimbabwe


results? activist charged and sought. violent backlash. growing fear of social protest in CIS.

Zimbabwe



Zimbabwe


heʼs been in power since independence. he was viewed as a liberation leader in the 1980s. the ensuing decades saw him turn into a corrupt dicator with no ability to rule the country
30 years of corruption. not easily overcome. its a process.
election was a kind of revolution
story about activists

Zimbabwe Accountability
Government Citizen

White African - http://www.flickr.com/photos/whiteafrican/

Photo: Harry


the fist of government - disapperances
mobile phones - taking a picture of the front page of teh newspaper during elections to verify results.
Morgan Tsvangirai is the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.[1] He is the President of the Movement for Democratic Change - Tsvangirai (MDC-T) and a key figure in the opposition to President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai was sworn
in as the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe on 11 February 2009.[2] He sustained non-life threatening injuries in a car crash on 6 March 2009 when heading towards his rural home in Buhera. His wife, Susan Tsvangirai, was killed in the
head-on collision accident.[3]

5 Elements 5 Elements
Obama Hip-Hop
1. Empowered volunteers 1.B-Boying

2. Social networks 2.MCing

3. Bloggers 3.Grafﬁti

4. YouTube viral videos 4. DJing

5. Micro-donations 5. Knowledge


Proving itself successful, this model of change is now being replicated. Yet there are few organizations that understand how to implement this kind of project. While most are currently trying to catch up, we
have built strong connections with our target population and explored their internal technological capacities, external network capabilities and their needs and interests in this type of work.
*or did obama change the game?? *representative democracy: not necessarily accountable to votersa

US Accountability
Government Citizen


in US we check our representatives and whether theyʼre lying to us
merely having a change in government isnt enough. theres stilll a responsibility for citizens to be vigilent

By: Shepherds Fairey

Burma / Myanmar

burma is a country that has been under dictatorship even longer than zimbabwe. a nation of over 50 million is kept under tight control. Orwell anecdote.
state law and order restoration council
state peace and development council

Saffron Revolution
In Sept. 2007, price of gasoline rose more than twice, people took to the streets.

the largest protests the nation had seen since 1988. 20 years ago, the military killed over 3,000 protesters. This time, the loss of life was much less because of cell phones, which played a role in both reporting and coordinating.

Closed society. On the reporting side, monks carried camera phones and they and other citizen journalists sent mobile images, video and voice information to the outside world.

Coordination also happened through mobiles, thanks to trusted networks between contacts inside and contact on border. example: joining protest 1km away and not knowing.

Saffron Revolution
In Sept. 2007, price of gasoline rose more than twice, people took to the streets.

the largest protests the nation had seen since 1988. 20 years ago, the military killed over 3,000 protesters. This time, the loss of life was much less because of cell phones, which played a role in both reporting and coordinating.



Saffron Revolution

BURJ AL ARABIn Sept. 2007, price of gasoline rose more than twice, people took to the streets.

the largest protests the nation had seen since 1988. 20 years ago, the military killed over 3,000 protesters. This time, the loss of life was much less because of cell phones, which played a role in both reporting
and coordinating.



Saffron Revolution

next step? what does a free burma look like? would it have been better off to be successful? what does a free iraq look like? (i wont show that). networking groups and creating a virtual civil society can be a
powerful tool. but only if done correctly

Saffron Revolution
next step? what does a free burma look like? would it have been better off to be successful? what does a free iraq look like? (i wont show that). networking groups and creating a virtual civil society can be a powerful tool. but only if
done correctly

http://www.flickr.com/photos/creepysleepy/3429118253/

Twitter Revolution
people used twitter to organize a flash mob. but networked!
*results? activist charged and sought. violent backlash. growing fear of social protest in CIS.
*digital refugees

*anti-communist demonstrators set a bonfire on the steps of parliament, Tuesday April 7, 2009, in Chisinau, Moldova, during protests against the declared results of Sunday's parliamentary elections. Many thousands of
demonstrators attempted to storm the presidential palace and parliament in a violent demonstration against what they said were fraudulent elections. Associated Press/John McConnico
*"Help Twitter the Revolution in Moldova" protest outside the UN - http://www.flickr.com/photos/creepysleepy/3429118253/

Iranian Revolution
Facebook? Twitter? etc?

Iranian Revolution

what does the blogosphere look like?
sizable Iranian blogosphere (40,000-100,000 active blogs), it's hardly obvious that Twitter is the most important tool for Iranians involved in sharing information about their country's future.

Iranian Revolution

in the video stream, the same way digital cameras include encoding on photographs listing such things as device make and model, and date and time of capture--but we need to be really careful not to create
tracking information that would expose individual users.
*8,000 Iranians were native Twitter users prior to the election, and that in her reading, less than two dozen twitterers from inside the country were genuine and credible primary sources of information *Videos
from street protests that took place on a Monday, for example, were being posted to YouTube or Vimeo or Flickr on a Thursday, which was a recipe for confusion over what was actually taking place in Iran.
Then there was the fact that many of the most powerful photos of the events in Iran were posted to Flickr under a traditional copyright license, rather than, say, Creative Commons
*footnoting & misinformation
*changing our Twitter icons green to launching distributed denial of service attacks on Iranian servers to setting up Internet proxies for Iranians to use?

Revolution?

http://www.embassyofheaven.com/newslett/horse.gif

You could make the case that just as accurate a story in Iran is that network-based political organizing has a fatal ﬂaw: networks have choke points.
revolutionaries distributing pamphlets or riding around on horseback yelling "the Redcoats are coming!". do to, but we can protect against those by
1. deﬁning technology broadly. a horse is technology. a cellphone is also technology
2. understand how to circumvent barriers before they go up. for example...

Tools
Tor Onion Routing

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/whiteafrican/2736565604/

SMS - MARKB to 41411 on your mobile


want to help? there are options

D
2
Digital Democracy
Working with local partners to connect
people through new technologies that
encourage education, communication and
civic participation.

Mark Belinsky
MBelinsky@digital-democracy.org - @mbelinsky
DIGITAL-DEMOCRACY.ORG

Intros

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