\n| \n There seems to be a certain unfounded optimism
\n that something intrinsic in the nature of blogs or the internet guarantees
\n that they will be a force for openness and reform in the political
\n system. We wish we could share in this heady euphoria, but just because
\n we
\n got there first doesn’t mean we have an advantage when the time comes
\n for full deployment of the technology. <\/p>\n In our opinion technology is by and large value neutral. If
\n it is true that technological innovations are often introduced by free-thinkers
\n and creative iconoclasts, it is equally true that the more powerful
\n these innovations are the more quickly they are adopted
\n and co opted by the existing power structure.<\/p>\n Case in point – the Printing Press. While some feel that the
\n ongoing digital revolution is the most significant upgrade to information
\n infrastructure since Gutenberg, it is useful to review what happened
\n in the 15th century. When old Johannes came up with the first printing
\n press, German reformers were all aflutter with the liberating idea
\n that now books and political tracts no longer needed to be copied out
\n one at a time by hand.<\/p>\n But what was the first real book that they printed? The Bible!
\n And within a very few years the dominant power in Europe at that time,
\n the Catholic Church, owned 90% of the existing presses and had instituted
\n controls and taxes on printing and publishing that continue to this
\n day.<\/p>\n The clearer it gets to even brain-dead ward-heelers that the
\n internet technologies are potentially political dynamite, the quicker
\n they are going to hire or breed their own brand of bloggers. The uses
\n to which they will put "our" creations are frightening to imagine.
\n Can they be stopped?<\/p>\n The printing press did end up popularizing literature, theology and
\n politics, but it took 200 years and the Protestant reformation to loosen
\n the stranglehold of the Papacy on Europe. We must remember technology
\n is a two edged sword, and be ready for the entrenched power bases to
\n turn our own tools against us.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There seems to be a certain unfounded optimism that something intrinsic in the nature of blogs or the internet guarantees that they will be a force for openness and reform in the political system. We wish we could share in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |