Just like real internet…except it’s not.
Mobile technology took the world by storm during the aughts. Personally, I did not even begin the decade owning a cell phone. It was not until 2002 that I decided it might be appropriate to embark on my own wireless journey. Now, at the beginning of 2010, I have already been a proud iphone user for over two years.
Indeed, as the decade rolled over last week, one of the pervasive retrospective topics conversation was that of technological advancement. After a bursting .com bubble at the end of the ’90s, the aughts provided many a promising advancement in technology. The emergence of social networking in tandem with improved 3G networks provide an interesting vector through which we can look at social movements and recent world events–perhaps we can even hypothesize about how improved mobile technology may change the way these events will unfold in the years to come.
RFE/RL recently posted a thought-provoking article about how mobile internet is rapidly changing the world we live in. Not so much in terms of soccer moms syncing their workout mix, family schedules and facebook profiles on one device, but more so in terms of teenagers in Nepal being able to indescriminately post and view content on youtube and Senegalese cab drivers accessing BBCworld. from their driver’s seats.
The advancement of mobile technology has two interesting indicators of social import. One is the potential narrowing of the digital divide–the other is the speed through which are able to access and understand social movements and events as they are happening.
Though not an expert on the digital divide, I do have one thought to proffer about what this increased accessibility to 3G technology means–that market forces are primarily responsible for the slimming gap in this arena. By advancing this technology, producing machines more inexpensively and making them more widely accessible and affordable to broader (and less affluent) populations, the market has achieved a way to digitally connect people more quickly and effectively than many non-profits and philanthropic efforts have been able to in recent years. This is point has yet to be fully explored, but I wanted to flag it now for further discussion.
The more interesting piece of this technological evolution is how it relates to and can impact world events. I am thinking specifically of one of 2009′s top news stories–the Iranian Elections and the uprisings that followed. Twitter had a huge presence in the aftermath of the elections and, in fact, was the number one trending topic for the entire year. Despite governmental attempts at blocking access to certain social media outlets , there was enough information “getting out” to incite counter-attempts to thwart attempted blockades of information (i.e. Twitter users from around the world setting their location as “Tehran” to confuse government filters).
The full impact of this cannot be known–just as a clear sense of what is happening “on the ground” during events such as these is difficult to ascertain in 140 characters or less. But we can absolutely be sure of this: technology and worldwide access to information will continue to be a contributing factor to the outcome of any political event. The more widespread access to the internet and 3G technology is, the more prevalent the impact will be. However, among the myriad or questions that remain are how well these technologies and their ability to facilitate informal accounts of events an information will help us prevent another Rwanda or Darfur–or perhaps react to such events more quickly. How might governments choose to exert sovereign boundaries in the technological sphere in the future? Will there be strategies in place to contain the digital flow of information within political borders?
As always, the political will of governments and their people may be the greatest contributing factor to how problems are perceived, understood and managed.
