The Internet is essential for the spread of democracy, said author Evgeny Morozov at “Internet Freedom and American Power,” on Thursday.
About 25 people gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab for the talk as part of a series of lectures titled “Ideas Matter” to discuss the vast political implications of freedom in the Internet.
The Ideas Matter series is organized by the Boston Review, a non-profit magazine in a joint project with MIT’s Political Science department.
“America doesn’t want to promote freedom of the Internet but freedom via the internet,” said Morozov, a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, visiting scholar at Stanford University, blogger and author of “Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom.”
The project is meant to be “a lecture series that brings our writers together with other experts and practitioners for substantive debate on the challenges of our times,” according to the Boston Review’s website.
The belief of the project is that “debate and discussion subject to evidence and reasoning is the key to solving problems,” said Deborah Chasman, editor of The Boston Review.
The lecture included a panel comprised of prestigious writers, professors and experts in the field of political and social change, addressing their opinions on the role of the Internet in America’s foreign policy and promotion of democracy.
Morozov used examples of individuals using social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, as a medium for facilitating protests.
“The government knows that the internet is used as a vehicle for promoting American foreign policy objectives,” Morozov said.
He also outlined the troubles with Internet access in foreign countries such as Egypt, where an Internet kill switch was recently implemented in response to major protests, and the implications of those issues in the United States.
“There are dangerous consequences in passing the ‘Internet Kill Switch’ bill,” he said. “America thinks of the internet as a bargaining chip.”
All state nations are grappling with the Internet, said Guobin Yang, a panel representative and associate professor of Asian and Middle Eastern cultures at Barnard College.
“We need to understand how people understand the same infrastructure and tools and use the tools based on their understanding,” Yang said.
Audience members were encouraged to ask questions and express their opinions, an aspect of the discussion that was both enjoyed and questioned by Jeff Rosa, an MIT employee.
While Rosa, who has attended the past two Ideas Matter lectures, enjoyed the discussion between audience speakers, he said “people didn’t really listen.”
“The point that the speaker and panelists were trying to make didn’t get across to some of the audience members,” Rosa said.
However, he said he liked the idea of including the panel.
“It’s good to have an outspread of people to get a variety of opinions,” Rosa said.
Those interested in attending forthcoming lectures can visit the Boston Review website for more details. Future lecture topics include the government’s role in the economy, with a talk headed by Eliot Spitzer, and the issue of same-sex marriage.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
