[WS:] I think a more accurate view is that they are neither revolutionary nor counter-revolutionary. Per se, they do not matter. What matters is the social context in which they are being used, and depending on that context, they can be either revolutionary, counter-revolutionary, or neutral.
Some time ago a bunch of media researchers argued that the "media effect" depends on what "uses and gratifications" their audiences get out of them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_and_gratifications_theory).
Computers and the internet are not that much different, they are basically media on steroids - they allow more direct manipulation of the contents than the "old" media, but they are both "interactive" in the sense that they both require active participation of the audience in decoding and interpreting the contents.
A mimeographed copy of a samizdat is no less interactive in that respect than, say, twitter of facebook. One can argue that samizadat is even more "interactive" because it interacts with more people than a facebook account. After all, facebok replaced face to face interaction among people who already know each other rather than among strangers. Samizdats reached mostly people whom the writers/producers did not know. In other words, facebook and twitter merely replaced (i) casual chats during lunch breaks and leisure time among friends and acquaintances and (ii) gossip columns in tabloids. However, their role as a potential "organizing tool" is no different from that of mimeograph - it depends solely on how much the prospective audience avails itself of- and is prepared to respond to- the message contents delivered through it.
The fact that the population is for the most part "pacified" and unwilling to engage in radical activism has everything to do with social structure and social forces and very little, if anything, to do with computers and the internet.
Wojtek