Technology and political change

As a quiet panic continues to grip five continents with Penultimos Dias heading into its third week off-line and under repair, that blog's author Ernesto Hernandez Busto takes a hard look at the “limits of cyber-dissidence” in El Pais.

The question is whether new information technologies drive political change. The answer is increasingly colored by facts such as these: governments can often use the technologies as well as their opponents, and technology cannot succeed where there is absence of motivation.

An earlier commentary from Ernesto on cyber-activism in Cuba, in English, is here.

In his El Pais article, he makes reference to a debate on this topic between Yevgeny Morozov and Clay Shirky; it can be found in the UK’s Prospect magazine here, here, here, and here.