Where is the Tech-Media Spring now?
Anyone remember the Arab Spring? You know where the various peoples of generally Arab North Africa had their erstwhile pro-democracy uprisings taken over by western media as the soon to be salad days of when all government bowed to Silicon Valley’s subsuming cloak of power. Anyone remember that bit?
The silence from the the manicured campuses of Northern California on the subject is deafening. Sure, people did take things into their hands and people did vote with their tapping fingers, but also with ballots, bricks and bullets to get what the majority of the people there wanted – which was either political Islam or another dictator. Not very Silicon Valley friendly, techno-libertarian or cyber-utopian is it? Oh those pesky ideas from 1392 years ago that a 1/5 of the entire world’s population seem to follow. But I’m sure there’s a startup and an app for the intractable shitstorm going down right now. Nothing a couple fusball tables and a Kickstarter couldn’t sort out I’m sure.
Syria and Iraq now are chock full of tweeting, posts, and snaps – but of calls for jihad, snuff beheading and grooming of 15 year old kids to move to a warzone for a death cult. Talk about ‘game changing’. If the Valley wants to claim credit for tech-enabled hypercapitalism masquerading as something akin to the civil rights movement, then it should claim credit for the ensuing aftermath of roughly 30 million people being pulled out of the frying pan and plopped into the fire.