Canadian Digital Revolution in the Twenty-First Century

Posted on February 11, 2011


Word, dat.

Are we tired of this discussion yet? If so, why do we still have to discuss it: the role of social media in anti-governmental revolutions, big and small?

And we do. Boy howdy, do we ever.

Does anyone remember The Digital Revolution?

First we were all “Social Media causes revolutions.” And then we were all “No it doesn’t. Social Media is just for Farmville.” And, unsurprisingly, neither of these is literally true; surprisingly, however, both of these statements are themselves tools of repressive regimes: the first is the mantra of every two-bit failed marketer turned social media guru (you know the ones: the ones who auto-DM new Followers with “Like my Facebook Page!” and who don’t want you to think for yourself; they want you to hire them and drink their adulterated Kool-Aid); the second is the reflexive, defensive refrain of every institution whose house of cards is threatened by social media (“Lalalalala, I can’t hear you! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, and no, you cannot twitpic in here! God forbid people discuss things freely; they might find something out!). What’s continually shocking to me is how many good people are more comfortable delegating their critical thought processes to orthodoxies of one type or another.

It’s such a relief, I guess. Saves valuable time that could be spent playing Farmville.

But I, as usual, digress. Let’s back up a bit and explain a few things, shall we? Starting with that tweet, by my buddy the erudite pithy, and Norwegian-curling-pants-fancying Kye Grace.

This week in the face of vast, and almost entirely social media-based outrage, the CRTC was forced to back down from a throttled, capitalism-choked vision of the internet, where the more money you have, the more freedom you would have and the cheaper your internet access would be. This is, roughly, equivalent to giving Big Tobacco a discount on buying tv ads for political campaigns, while charging Joe Palooka through the nose just for the privilege of watching them.

The blowback train was built as follows: Months if not years before, savvy activists like OpenMedia and Cory Doctorow were sounding the alarm, because they knew that in a conservative climate power itself is distributed along exactly the same curve as capital: duh, that’s the platform. They saw that access to the internet, and thus access to the default communications platform of our time, would be restricted along similar lines, and they got in there early, much earlier, indeed, than the other side, raising awareness and, frankly, boring some of us silly with the topic.

I was all like, Okay, okay, I’m on board. Now quit emailing me until it’s time to do something!!! And that was LAST year!

Well, this past week it was finally time to Do Something. As the CRTC made the predicted changes the floodgates opened, which must surely have caught them by surprise, as they thought they’d got the keys securely locked up. They were blasted from all corners on every available social media platform, including the venerable e-petition, which all might have been so much sound and fury, signifying nothing, if not for the fact that the mainstream press (which is all The Suits pay attention to, because it’s what the Deputy Ministers all read) now takes dictation from Twitter.

Once the various media hegemonies picked up on the issue, it was all over but the apology in Parliament. While only a fool would claim the Canadian mainstream media is a bastion of anarchism, this once there was something in it for them to attack the CRTC, and that something was the approval of their audience. Sure, the CRTC allows them to operate, but they don’t make any particular money from the CRTC: they make it when people see the ads, and the more rt’d their stories are, the more people say “did you pick up the paper today?” the more money they make. So this once, attacking the CRTC at second-hand, by allowing their very leftiest columnists to pipe up about Net Neutrality, and by covering the social media shitstorm (a no-fingerprints solution which also allows them to cover Kim Kardashian’s sex tape without actually covering Kim Kardashian’s sex tape) they got enormous goodwill and loyalty from the consumers, while not shooting themselves in the foot, licensing-wise.

Laura Secord Homestead, Niagara-on-the-Lake, O...

Image via Wikipedia

Then the government did the obvious thing, so as not to lose votes. The math here is very simple. In a world where the One Citizen One Vote on Every Issue system in ancient Athens is too difficult to implement, social media gives voice to those citizens who can still be heard in the aggregate.

Did social media cause this revolution? Well, in this case the revolution was ABOUT social media, so the answer is yes. In any revolution or coup, the first step is to seize control of the means of communication. In Canada, this just means using them before your enemy even wakes up to them (seriously, is the CRTC even ON Twitter or Facebook except as a target?).

While in Tunisia social media was analogous to Paul Revere’s horse, in the Canadian Net Neutrality revolt, social media was the land itself that Laura Secord walked across to raise the alarm. And we kept it. Again.

Enhanced by Zemanta