#IranElection … This Is It. The Big One.
Q&A with Clay Shirky on Twitter and Iran
In regards to my previous post from yesterday, I’d like to quickly share this quote I’ve found from Clay Shirky, a Interactive Telecommunications teacher at NYU. He spoke to TED last year on Facebook, Twitter, and the like, and he was recently asked to comment about the usage of these tools in Iran. Here’s what he had to say,
“… this is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Chicago demonstrations of 1968 where they chanted “the whole world is watching.” Really, that wasn’t true then. But this time it’s true … and people throughout the world are not only listening but responding. They’re engaging with individual participants, they’re passing on their messages to their friends, and they’re even providing detailed instructions to enable web proxies allowing Internet access that the authorities can’t immediately censor. That kind of participation is really extraordinary.”
Check more of his question and answer session with TED.
[...] Iran’s all a-Twitter Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxJust read Clay Shirky’s perspective on the election turmoil in Iran. It’s hardly surprising he’d focus on the technological aspect. “… this is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Chicago demonstrations of 1968 where they chanted “the whole world is watching.” Really, that wasn’t true then. But this time it’s true … and people throughout the world are not only listening but responding. They’re engaging with individual participants, they’re passing on their messages to their friends, and they’re even providing detailed instructions to enable web proxies allowing Internet access that the authorities can’t immediately censor. That kind of participation is really extraordinary.” (Source-Anthropology.net) [...]
FreThink » Iran’s all a-Twitter
June 16, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Excellent quote. And he is right. The internet provides an absolutely stunning dynamic regarding any other sort of business-as-usual human activities. Its capacity for mobilizing involvement of all sorts has been steadily broadening for the last decade. Now, political campaign funds are raised from tiny donations instantly and political movements can be influenced by ordinary citizens in nations on the opposite side of the world.
The limits of this cannot be immediately fathomed, by myself. I am wondering how this sort of tool for organization, this internet, can be influential in multinational opinion and movement. Aside from business, that is.
neoteotihuacan
June 16, 2009 at 9:25 pm
[...] revolution in Iran,” that “this is it, this is the big one” (thanks to Anthropology.net) the “it” and the “one” are what are most in doubt. Yet it is doubt that is [...]
America’s Iranian Twitter Revolution « OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY
June 17, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Actually, television played a huge part in the civil rights movement back in the late 1950′s and early 1960′s. Before that time racism in America after the Civil War was sort of America’s little secret. And satellite television also played a big part during the fall of communism in Russia in the early 1990′s when a coup was attempted against Gorbachev causing Yeltzin to take charge and rise to power.
Marcel F. Williams
June 18, 2009 at 12:03 pm