The West is very self-assured of how right their way of life is. Democracy, rule of law, political freedoms including press and speech, are bywords we are raised by. These values form the backbone of what the nations of Europe, North America, and Australasia consider makes them unique (read: better) than the rest of the planet. Having been raised as a child to value these same ideas all but religiously, and the free choice of people to live as they see fit, I will die defending them. I have no qualms whatsoever stating that I buy into the Western belief that our democratic and liberty-enshrining ideals (when we actually care to follow them, of course) are superior to the other ideologies behind governments around the world and throughout history. I recognize I am biased; so be it.
What I do not buy, however, is the common wisdom among many Western ideologues who believe that it is but a matter of time before democracy comes to the rest of the world. These analysts insist that tyranny cannot reign forever and that eventually, like the Berlin Wall before them, the autocratic regimes still propped up around the planet will come crumbling down from the forces of Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, and blogs such as this that "spread freedom of information and the truth", so to speak. The idea is rooted in history: according to these theorists, Levi's and Coca-Cola conquered Eastern Europe; Apple and social networking will conquer Iran and North Korea.
Now, I admit that the majority of the serious international studies/relations establishment do not subscribe to this very, very liberal (in international relations, "liberal" means something else, relax) theory of democratization by exposure to our products and freedom. Serious students of the modern era will tell you Soviet communism collapsed because its centralized economic management choked both innovation and competitiveness and, once coupled with the end of the propaganda train that lied through its teeth about who was ahead between West and East, these forces brought down the last crumbling centers of political power in that nation.
But that's not the narrative being told to the average American.
If you were to read the headlines of mainstream publications or watch cable news broadcasts, you would be convinced that if only the Chinese would let their people Google anything, democracy would come running out of the computers like poltergeists from televisions (No? Too vague a reference?), and that if Twitter weren't interfered with, protests could be organized on a grand scale to topple the Iranian dictatorship. Even our policymakers in front of cameras focus on vague terms like "human rights" and "freedom of information" in the same breath, implying that wi-fi access will suddenly open the doors to Chinese prisons everywhere. Who are we kidding?
For one thing, the Chinese and Iranians and Koreans and African warlords are not that stupid (at least, most of them). The PRC is not telling its people that they are richer and better than America. They are (correctly) telling them that America is 250% richer than China despite China having almost 4 times the people of the US. They are using the truth to increase the impetus for Chinese entrepreneurship and growth. The Iranians are not afraid of Twitter letting people protest---their brutal crackdowns were equally effective at putting down demonstrations whether they were organized via "Tweet" or by megaphone. Guns are still more lethal than fiberoptic cables.
Information is indeed important in a free society, and the internet is admittedly the largest, most open, and broadest wealth of information in human history. It is also the most sordid collection of lies, myths, legends, errors, and unfounded opinions (some of which are written by this author) in human history. If I may, "you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." It is no easy tool to utilize. Think, for a moment, of our own democratic society and how we use the internet for ourselves. (I mean besides Farmville and porn.) Did you get that email about how Obama planned on giving a new award to the Vietnam sympathizer Jane Fonda? How about that one where a Republican candidate for Congress was caught in a neo-Nazi uniform? Complete with pictures as proof! What about the irrefutable evidence that the President was born in Kenya? Oh, oh! And the Lindsay Lohan sextape, and the proof of Chupacabras being real, and the pills that grow that "special something" (funny how half of them never say "penis") inches in just WEEKS?
You see my point. The internet may be a great place to get access to treasure troves of information---I recommend the BBC and Meet the Press podcasts on iTunes, the Economist online, and the TED Talks, for starters---but you must know where to look, and how to discern what is real from what is not. We barely have a handle on it, and we were the first ones to use the internet at all. What makes you think that suddenly-liberated or net-access peoples will know immediately? Right now, many of these people live in societies with strict controls on access to information. Effectively, dis-information is the key tool to keep people in line. But in the democratic world, mis-information is just as effective a tool, and you can bet your iPad/netbook/eReader/laptop/desktop the dictators of the world are working on that too.
Don't get me wrong: I am not saying the oppressed peoples of the world would be worse off with open internet access than without. I am not saying that it would not benefit them to have access to information critical of their governments, and the ability to discuss and use this information to demand improvements to their societies. But don't forget: for every report on human rights abuses in China, there are Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib op-eds. For every story of Western charity, there are 10 videos of "2 girls, 1 cup" reactions. For every tweet link they follow to coordinate protests, there are a hundred rickrolls waiting. This is not a negative; this is reality. This is not pessimism; it is the truth. For any peoples freed from electronic suppression, the transition will be a long road of learning how broad, fascinating, and sometimes disturbing the uses of the unlimited internet can be. Ultimately, the internet is one of our greatest achievements as a species and should be valued as such.
The bottom line is this: the internet is no catch-all source of liberation and civilization to the rest of the world, just as the radio and the television and the phone were not. They are in fact powerful tools, and we can hardly disregard them; yet when I see pundits and policymakers alike relying on them as the last best hope of democratizing unfree peoples I cannot help but think, to borrow a line from a Transformer, "this is bad comedy". The internet will not be the conquerer of the unfree, but it will be a powerful tool if and when these societies join the ranks of the free world: to coordinate, to manipulate, to unite, to divide, to empower, to condemn. It will be as powerful and various as it is here in America and the rest of the West. And we should be damn proud of that when the day comes.
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