It's interesting that the opposite happened in the past 5 years. The Revolution IS on YouTube. It is live-Tweeted, live-blogged, and live-streamed. It gets information past oppressive regimes, authors past publishers, and knowledge past editors. The Internet sped up The Revolution, and that's why Sazorsky wants to slow it down.
It's also interesting that there has been no Revolution. Politics are just as divisive and ill-informed as ever, and the division is live-Tweeted, live-blogged, and live-streamed. Disinformation keeps the same politicians in power, the same industries on life support, and the truth down. The Internet slowed down the Revolution, and that's why nobody needs to spend time controlling it.
I don't think the internet has had nearly as much influence on everyday events as we give it. Most tweets, videos, and blogs are for the benefit of people watching in. The only benefit to people involved in the action is increased PR. But most of the situations are left untouched by the outside world despite the PR. And outside help will only come for greater political/business reasons. Social media is great, but don't let the rhetoric get out of control.
It can even have a detrimental effect, as people who tweet or blog about something can psychologically feel they've done enough good work, instead of being compelled to take "real" action.
I also wonder what impact things like voting and retweeting have on that psychological effect. I can only imagine that this kind of outside validation only reinforces the idea that what you've done is good and good enough. Further, what impact does it have to display the vote count to others (both for the commenter and its readers)?
You're not giving the internet enough credit, I think. See what we are doing right now, writing comments on a news site? That's called "public debate".
Do you think we would be trained to do public debate if there was not internet? I think most of us wouldn't be.
My point is, the internet gives to an unprecedented number of people the power to argue smart. Sure, smart arguing isn't nearly enough, but it's a much needed catalyst.
Since the internet came about has:
Healthcare become cheaper/better distributed?
Income inequality become less of a reality?
Citizens been able to create meaningful change from politicians?
People been able to organize against large corporations?
I could go on, but the answers are a resounding no. I love the internet. It allows me to feed my family. It allows me to quickly view more information than otherwise possible. But the question is what are we now doing with these huge piles of info dropped upon us?
The internet looks like it has been there forever. But look at the dates, it didn't really took off before 1995, and even then, most people didn't have a connexion yet. The internet is still young. Not many people are using it fully, and we are already seeing significant (though not huge) effects.
Compare the internet and the printing press. The printing press allowed people to read. This was huge. But this was also slow. It took time to spread, and it took more time to get to the enlightenment, and the revolutions that ensued.
Now, the internet is allowing people to write. This is equally huge. Remember the old, pious principles about freedom of expression? Until the internet, few had that freedom: politicians, journalists, eminent union leaders, and that was it. Now everyone can publish.
The internet will enable revolutions. Probably not now, it is too young, but… See what is currently happening in Spain. There currently is a huge protest, which is now becoming more than a mere protest. They are constructively discussing about how to run the country, while explicitly avoiding "politics"[1]. They are too big to be ignored by the mainstream media, even here in France. Their main communication and organization tool is the internet. Without this many-to-many communication platform, they just couldn't have done it.
They may not succeed, but they at least have a chance. And I predict there will be more like it. I don't know what will become of it, but at this rate, there will be huge changes soon. Like, in the next 20 years.
While I agree with most of what you're saying, I should point out one key difference between the printing press and the internet. The printing press required 1 piece of equipment, then could distribute knowledge to people without any specialized equipment. The owner of the printing press was in full control of the production process.
However, the internet is based upon much larger systems that are generally owned by large corporations and controlled by government. Any distributer of information on the internet does so with implicit permission from those who own the underlying systems. There may be mainstream ways in the future (or even today) to avoid this top-down control schema we currently have, but until then, there will be no revolution on the internet.
The printing press was nevertheless relatively expensive. Few could afford a printing press. It made copyright law actually enforceable. I agree however that censorship was harder: after 5000 copies of something was already printed, it was extremely difficult to prevent its distribution. And the more printing presses around, the harder it became.
About the internet, I think you're only half-right. You're right in the sense that here we're talking on HN, and we're censored by pg (=> no spam, no troll). When you publish on blogger, people can see a nice button on which they can click if they think your blog might displease Google. Most e-mail is hosted by few, big providers, many of which are actually spying on you for advertisement purposes.
The backbones, on the other hands, are still relatively neutral. If you have an ISP that won't spy on you, and let you run a server, you can still safely publish whatever you want. There are still ways to publish anonymously, should you really need it. Wikileaks still isn't down.
Sure, the internet isn't as free as it should be. By far. But it is already free enough to teach people how to constructively participate in public debates (write clearly, choose relevant arguments and change their damn minds). Now if the world is walking on its head, and we have a critical mas of constructive debaters, then I think a revolution is unavoidable (I hope it won't be too bloody this time).
So here is my main point: (1) the world is walking on its head, (2) we currently haven't reached that critical mass yet, and (3) our numbers are growing. I therefore predict that if the internet doesn't turn into Google/Disney TV in the next 20 years, there will be a global revolution. We essentially need our "internet children" to turn adult.
Note that I assume that constructive debate is enough. This is because we are already seeing some significant changes: we now see at political rallies some low militant publicly contradicting their leaders. With arguments. Or some random citizen that can debate with their mayor in frond of a small crowd. From the point of view of our leaders, this is very weird. Only their buddies from the other side used to dare argue, let alone be capable of not deflating themselves at the first counter-argument!
Very interesting indeed. When I snarfed this from Gil, I wasn't thinking of social revolutions, I was responding to DMCA takedowns of hacking information, much like the recent Sony/Geohot situation.
It's also interesting that there has been no Revolution. Politics are just as divisive and ill-informed as ever, and the division is live-Tweeted, live-blogged, and live-streamed. Disinformation keeps the same politicians in power, the same industries on life support, and the truth down. The Internet slowed down the Revolution, and that's why nobody needs to spend time controlling it.