On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 16:06:39 -0500 (EST) Michael Pollak
<mpollak at panix.com> writes:
>
> On Sat, 12 Feb 2011, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > the idea is the same: solidarities generated through contact and
> common
> > experience. Electronic relationships are usually more tenuous than
> that.
>
> Up until now, I've generally been on that side of the argument.
Me too, but having said that, it seems that new communications technologies have played important roles in some of the major uprisings of the past thirty years. During the run-up to the Iranian Revolution, when Khomeini was still living in exile in Paris, his sermons and speeches would be tape recorded and the cassettes would then be smuggled into Iran. Those cassettes helped him to get his message into Iran. A decade later during the Tiansmen Square protests, student activists were making use of faxes to get their word out, both to their fellow activists and to Western news media. The protests in Iran of a couple of years ago following the presidential election there, exposed both the strengths and limitations of social media as organizing tools. On the one hand, they made it easier for likeminded people to get into contact with one another and to organize protests and other action. On the other hand, they probably also, for a lot of people, helped delude people into thinking that a Facebook protest would be almost as good as a real live protest in the streets. And at the same time, it turns out that the security forces in Iran were able to use the social media to help track down dissidents, so they could be apprehended and arrested.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ____________________________________________________________ $65/Hr Job - 25 Openings Part-Time job ($20-$65/hr). Requirements: Home Internet Access http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4d570c5d3559829f32est05vuc