<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt">I broadly agree with the feelings expressed by Michael in this post-conference analysis. It was interesting, well organized, but as far as feeling empowered in the struggle for human emancipation, it didn't work, for many of the reasons outlined in Michael's analysis.<br><br>My guess is that contemporary U.S. academic culture generates this kind of powerlessness, and that it is fruitless to expect anything else from it. Social change will come from the new type of networked social institutions, where the best and most engaged academics will be participating, despite, and not thanks to, their academic affiliations.<br><br>here's a mini-essay that makes a good point, and de-trivializes the debate about the use of the internet for social change:<br><br><span>the source is <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.socialtextjournal.org/periscope/2009/11/social-networking-and-the-making-of-a-civil-rights-movement.php">http://www.socialtextjournal.org/periscope/2009/11/social-networking-and-the-making-of-a-civil-rights-movement.php</a></span><br><br><span>(processed via <a target="_blank" href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-deep-changes-in-iran/2009/12/25">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-deep-changes-in-iran/2009/12/25</a>)</span><br><br><br><div class="entry">
<p><strong>Finally, <a href="http://www.socialtextjournal.org/periscope/2009/11/social-networking-and-the-making-of-a-civil-rights-movement.php">an analysis of Iran</a> that gets its right!</strong>
Between on the one hand the naive embrace of a Twitter Revolution, and
a equally superficial dismissal of the internet because it purportedly
only reaches a minority, what matters is a long term understanding of
how it changes the social fabric. There are no automatic winners and
losers here, but disparate social forces seeking to maintain or gain
advantage in a radically new equilibrium. It is up to the forces of
emancipation to find optimal ways to use the new situation to their
advantage, because the enemies of emancipation will surely do so
themselves.</p><p><br></p>
<p>This is what Hamid Dabashi does in this mini-essay. He makes the really important point that <strong>new media technologies do not have to be in the hands of everyone, before they make a fundamental impact</strong>. Lots of gems here, so do please read it.</p><p><br></p>
<p>We conclude with a second expert on the Islamic spiritual underpinnings of social networking.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
<p><strong>1. The feedback of the internet on the public domain.</strong></p><p><strong><br></strong></p>
<p><em>“The tug of war between Mir Hossein Mousavi and the regime,
which he took implicitly to task by soliciting the official
opinion/fatwa of the leading oppositional ayatollah over and above the
head of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, was predicated on the
prominence of cyberspace social networking that over the last two
decades have redefined the terms of mass communication in Iran, almost
simultaneous with the rest of the world. The widespread use of cell
phones, SMS, Tweeter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, personal weblogs,
political and cultural websites, and the Internet editions of leading
reformist and conservative newspapers, skyrocketed in significant
portions of the society in the two decades leading to the June 2009
presidential election. Mousavi was not initiating any cyberspace
strategy. He was banking on it. <br></em></p><p><em><br></em></p>
<p><em>In a remarkable way the rise of computer literacy in the early
part of the 21st century in Iran is comparable to the rise of
newspapers and magazines early in the 19th century, when one of the
first groups of Iranian students that were sent to Europe brought with
them the first printing machine and with it founded the first
periodicals, whereby expanding the spectrum of the public domain, of
the collective consciousness of a society on the verge of monumental
changes. Almost a century later, during the Constitutional Revolution
of 1906-1911, the press had experienced such an organic growth that it
played an instrumental role in the successful making of the most
massive social uprising in the entire region, whereby an absolutist
monarchy was forced to accept a constitution. By the time of the
Constitutional Revolution, the press had helped expand, define, and
circumscribe the boundaries of the public domain beyond anything
achieved before it. The post-electoral crisis of the June 2009
presidential election echoed and expanded those momentous occasions
early in the 19th and then again early in the 20th century. <br></em></p><p><em><br></em></p>
<p><em>What we have witnessed over the last two decades, however, which
came to a dramatic crescendo in the course of the presidential crisis
of 2009, is the steady and exponential expansion of the public domain
into the cyberspace, to the point of having a catalytic, if not
overwhelming, effect over the physical space. In this respect the
question of the access to a personal computer or computer literacy is
entirely irrelevant, just as regular literacy was irrelevant earlier in
the 19th and 20th century, for all it took was just one person per
family, or a few per neighborhood to cover the entire pubic domain. We
have accounts of the early 20th century when newspapers were read on
street corners to a gathering crowd; and I have vivid memories of my
own childhood in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s in southern Iran
where one television set would serve an entire neighborhood. Regular
literacy early in the 19th century and computer literacy early in the
21st century may indeed be identical percentagewise–common to both
remains their catalytic effect on the society at large, which is now
globally wired. <br></em></p><p><em><br></em></p>
<p><em>The effective use of social networking in the course of the 2009
presidential campaign was predicated on the preceding three decades of
the Islamic Republic, where an overwhelmingly young population was
increasingly drawn into the electronically savvy age. When Mir Hossein
Mousavi declared to his followers that har Irani yek setad/every
Iranian [is] a campaign headquarter, he was banking on the
resourcefulness of his young admirers. By then SMS instant messaging
had become definitive to campaign organizations–so in between ordinary
and routine messages of friends and family members, a sudden rush of
political messages began to redefine the medium, as it expanded the
modus operandi of social mobilization and political campaigning. By now
mobile phones had become an integral part of the urban scenes, and
literally millions of young Iranians were on Facebook and Tweeter. The
skeletal structure of cyberspace, well-oiled and operative by mundane
uses, was now instantly turned into an effective mechanism of social
mobilization. </em></p>
<p><em>The same mobile phones that were used to take pictures of
friends and family to share with others in and out of the country, were
no used to take pictures and shoot videos of massive demonstrations
around the country and dispatched to millions of others who were not
there. The primary purpose of these snap shots or 30-second to 2-minute
videos was entirely domestic, for disseminating information, enabling
mobilization, and regrouping and organization, but before long these
visual evidence found their ways into the studios of BBC, CNN,
Aljazeera, and other global networks. Soon after the 12th June
election, all major foreign correspondences were either severely
restricted or else their permissions were cancelled and they had to
leave the country. By then the very architecture of journalism was
being re-defined. CNN’s senior correspondent Christiane Amanpour was
sitting in London looking at these snap shots and videos trying to make
their tail from their head. The notion of a “citizen journalist” had by
now assumed a particular poignancy in a nascent civil rights movement.</em></p><p><em><br></em></p>
<p><em>Though it was in the offing long before the June 2009
presidential election, the Iranian Civil Society/Jame’eh-yeh Madani
rapidly extended into the cyberspace, with political protest as a modus
operandi of civil society and civil protest. The events of
post-presidential election of June 2009 in Iran suddenly changed the
Facebook into an active site of social networking beyond a cyberspace
coffeehouse where people vicariously attended to meet knew people. Did
the Facebook save the Iranian civil right movement or the Iranian civil
rights movement save the Facebook–suddenly became a proverbial adage
that tilted on the side of the Iranian users of the coffeehouse. </em></p>
<p><em>The effective and creative use of cyberspace social networking
by the demonstrators obviously alerted the security apparatus of the
Islamic Republic in extending their surveillance mechanism to that
domain. High-ranking militia officers in fact made it quite clear and
publically announced that the demonstrators should not think that the
Internet was immune to their surveillance. Suddenly, almost overnight,
many Iranian users of Facebook changed their name and profile, assumed
“Neda” (in reference to Neda Aqa Soltan, who had assumed iconic
significance after her murder by the security apparatus of the Islamic
Republic) as their first name and “Irani/Iranian” as their last name.
Nokia was particularly singled out for attack and boycotting because it
had evidently sold the security apparatus of the Islamic republic
surveillance software. By no stretch of imagination, however, did this
extended form of surveillance prevent people from continuing to use the
Facebook and other forms of social networking–but the instant use of
pseudonyms and fear of reprisals became palpably evident in the
Internet.”</em></p><p><em><br></em></p>
<p><strong>2. The Islamic spiritual underpinnings of social networking.</strong></p><p><strong><br></strong></p>
<p>From a letter from Moussavi to Ayatollah Montazeri:</p><p><br></p>
<p><em>“The late Molla Mohsen Faiz Kashani,” Mousavi reminded the
Ayatollah of the prominent seventeenth century Shi’i philosopher
(1598-1680), “in his Olfatnameh/Book of Affinities, considers the
ultimate purpose of religious duties to be the attainment of social
empathy and affinity/mohabbat va olfat-e ijtema’i. The result of this
social empathy and affinity is what in modern social sciences is called
social networking/shabakeh- ha-ye ijtema’i.” </em></p>
<p><em>Mousavi then proceeds to point out that he intends this
constellation of social networking to be used to “resist the
government, prevent it from repeating its past mistakes.” These
networks will also “result in social rejuvenation, contain the emerging
energies and excited affections, and prevent their degeneration into
destructive directions.” He further adds plaintively, “based on what
Faiz has offered, this suggestion might have been considered a new
adaptation of the Islamic scripture, but unfortunately it has been
unfairly dubbed an idea copied from the CIA.”</em></p>
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