The Virtual Revolution episode 2

The Virtual Revolution: episode 2 

Twitter
Developed in San Francisco
In 2006
Part of social networking
twitter messages are only 140 characters long
can be seen by anyone who subscribes to you Twitter page
Protesters in Iran went on Twitter to tell the world about the fixed election that took place
Over 2 million tweets sent out of Iran in 2 days
200,000 tweets sent an hour

Appernet
foundation of the internet
packet switching
takes a piece of information and breaks it up into little pieces
its then put back together when the receiver (person) gets the information
used as a tool for computers to talk to each other

Aleks Krotosk...
"The web seems to have set information free and we've seen that as people fight for freedom and democracy"
"...the web is shifting power"
"accelerating globalisation" 
"...but its also reinventing warfare" 
"unmediated, interactive and its mobile"
"the web is like a tool box for protesters" 
"weapon of revolution" 
"works against central control" 
"the internet cannot be turned on or off"
"Does anyone have the power to turn it on or off?"
"in the right or wrong hands its makes a significant difference with battles against authority"
"anonymous users can now perform the role of investigative journalists"

Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the world wide web)...
"The web naturally seems to lead to openness"
"...it makes openness easy" 

Clay Shirky (Author, Here comes everyone)... 
"Anyone who wants to participate has at least the means to participate"
"there's a huge change"
"in the 20th century if you had something to say in public... you couldn't. Period"
"if you were a citizen but not a media professional you could not broadcast a message no matter how hard you tried" 

Stephen Fry 
"Hugely powerful tool for the state to control us"

Vint Cef (co-inventor of the internet) 
"there use to be one network and this was operated by and managed by the government giving it substantial control" 
"open platform"
"the most democratic opportunity for people to express themselves and to get information that has ever existed"