> Up until now, I've generally been on that side of the argument.
I don't think Gladwell gets it. The way I look at it is that technology will continue to change, and fast, because competition and the class struggle will keep motivating such change. It's like an arms race, so capitalists will keep introducing new technology to outsell their rivals, to split working people, to win wars, etc. Now, the products that embed the new technology have to be use values to the people who buy them, and the needs of those people shift, in part under those same pressures -- competition and class struggle being the generic terms for those pressures. New technology has intended and, mostly, unintended effects. The immediate intention of capitalists in introducing a technology may be private gain, fragmentation of working people. But the same technology may also enable working people to resist, unite, develop their capacities (even if in very partial ways) and carry out their struggle. So, it's a mix.
But, let's get now to Facebook, Twitter, email, Wiki, etc. Ideally for the rulers, these technologies would get people to buy more stuff, get more stupefied, etc. But, depending on conditions, people may use it to communicate, coordinate their struggles, unite. Technologies will have potential for uniting or dividing working people in varying degrees. They are not "neutral." They embody dominant (or, to a much lesser extent, counter-dominant) social structures, political and legal conditions, ideology, etc. Public transportation and urban settings are technologies more akin to people meeting, etc. than SUVs, highways, and nuclear weapons. But, as Marx suggested in the first page of Capital, we may keep finding out new ways to use old stuff. It's going to be very hard to find good uses for technologies such as nuclear weapons, unless we need to nuke a threatening asteroid or something. But Facebook, Twitter, email, and Wiki are pretty good for keeping people connected, which is a condition for people to be able to cooperate, coordinate actions, etc.
Now, if Facebook, etc. exist (and they already do!), then the rulers will use them for their purposes anyway, even if working people never learn to re-purpose them. The notorious thing here is that working people are using them and using them effectively, something that -- when social conflicts come to a head -- can provide a tiny edge to one of the sides and make all the difference in the world. So, I'd say, ask the Egyptians what their assessment of Facebook and Twitter is. Were they crucial in their (very partial, but still encouraging) victory? I'm sure the leadership would, for the most part, say that Facebook and Twitter were instrumental to their achievements. I mean, if they had used land line telephones to communicate (or foot messengers), they would have had a much harder time, given that their rulers are using more advanced stuff to keep them divided and scared. Resourceful people in dire struggles may still be forced to revert to old technologies if need be, but if a new technology can make you more productive in the struggle, why not appropriate the thingy?
That's the context that, IMO, Gladwell missed in his piece. Without saying, but basically, he erected a straw man to then slash it -- the nonsensical argument that the main reason why people rebel and/or win against oppression is *because of* social media. Who would argue that?