The internet is a dichotomy; between anarchy and empowerment. It’s anarchic because there aren’t any laws governing it. Being the world’s largest ungoverned space, the internet is full of online scams, bullying, hate speech and even terrorist activity planning.
On the flipside the access to information and the ability to communicate easily with like-minded people empowers those getting online. Inexpensive mobile phones connecting to the internet at high speed are now the spring board for new millions getting online. People and organizations now express their opinions easily on social media and blogs.
For some this digital empowerment will be the first empowerment in their lives, enabling them to be heard, counted and taken seriously for the first time, all because of an inexpensive device they can carry in their pockets. Billions of people are now creating and consuming digital content unbound by any terrestrial laws.
For the first time democratic states are forced to listen to and include many more voices in their affairs.
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Director Google Ideas Jared Cohen, who was formerly with the US State Department, highlight the challenges of this internet dichotomy in The New Digital Age, a book they co-authored. The book explores how the emerging digital age, with the internet at its heart, will challenge people, nations and businesses. The New Digital Age explores the complexities at the intersection of these three segments; people, nations and businesses.
Friction at these intersections is caused when objectives of people and businesses clash with those of the state. Such conflict exists everywhere. Authoritarian governments are finding their populations difficult to control, repress and influence due to the empowering effect of information and the ability of people to communicate with like-minded people from across the globe.
States wishing to influence, control and repress their citizens have been focusing on the internet’s anarchic nature as a reason for controlling access to it and why citizen activity requires surveillance.
Sri Lanka is far from the totalitarian paranoia of Iraq under Saddam Hussein or Afghanistan under the Taliban where even mobile phones were banned. Not all totalitarian regimes however are as crude and tactless as were Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. China, for instance, has far more subtle criteria for applying controls on the internet. Three tenets, established after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, govern China’s controls over what its citizens are not allowed to do on the internet. Don’t threaten the party, do not organize and do not jeopardize social stability govern internet censorship. In essence the Chinese censor’s main goal is to prevent the internet being used to organize political activity.
Social media and search engines popular in the rest of the world are unavailable in China. Citizens who use China based social networks and internet search will find any posts that challenge the norm quickly scrubbed off the internet by an army of censors employed by the state and private firms. Punishment for online political activism can be far harsher including residency at an isolated labour camp.
For people and companies opportunities will come hand in hand with global connectivity which is why they should treat with vitriolic protest any suggestion that social media is a disease or a threat to national security, as has been suggested by Sri Lankan leaders. Authoritarian regimes often use the ruse of national security to curtail liberty and impose censorship. Although the internet in Sri Lanka is relatively free compared to China, access to websites critical of the government is often blocked without legal oversight.
People and organisations empowered by the internet have the most to lose with restricted access. They have to realize the future will be shaped by how states, citizens and companies handle their new responsibilities.