I am lying outside on the grass at the Greek Theater. I feel the itchy grass between by toes, the breeze against my bear arms, and the sun warming my face. I see the lake through the forest of trees. I also notice all the little bugs in the grass, as I am technically an intruder in their world. I also see a couple of my classmates sun bathing on the other side of the theater. I smell the fresh, cut grass. I hear the faint cries of birds and the laughter of my classmates avoiding their copious amounts of homework. Outside I feel refreshed and lively, as opposed to when I am in a consensual hallucination, I feel stressed. I feel the need to constantly reply to emails or text messages or Facebook chat invitations. In a consensual hallucination I am hunched over staring at a computer screen gripping the mouse. Outside I am lying on my stomach with a wooden pencil in my hand and feel extremely peaceful. I sometimes get too wrapped up in what I have to do that I forget to take the time to observe the world I live in. While I am more connected to everyone else online, I feel disconnected. I notice a separation between the natural senses of the world like the sun on my face or the bugs crawling on my legs, all things simple and the desire to stay in touch, to constantly be connected. This course has definitely opened my eyes and I have begun to slowly resist technology and spend more time outside with my cell phone turned off because I fear the consequences of becoming completely consumed in a virtual world.

I wish the course had made us take one day and enter into a virtual world and/or play World of Warcraft. I personally have never gamed before and think the topics we discussed regarding Second Skin were not relatable because I never had personally experienced it. I think allowing ourselves to be consumed by the virtual worlds for say three hours would make seeing the effects of gaming more real.   

After reading the first part of Castronova, I am worried when there will be a mass exodus into virtual worlds. I don’t ever see myself using a virtual world, but that could just be because of my current situation. In college, I am constantly surrounded by my friends and love talking to them and spending time with them face to face. I don’t picture myself wanting to spend ten hours a day online in a virtual world, instead of laughing out loud and talking to my real life friends. In addition, my opportunity cost of spending more than two hours a day online is too great. I would be failing all my classes because I would be giving up time to study to be in a virtual world. I cannot afford to essentially waste my time not being productive. I also do not like the idea of anonymity online. People can create avatars that don’t look anything like them and pretend to be someone completely different. While people can be misleading on Facebook, I know I only communicate with my friends, people that I know in the real world. Virtual worlds can be very private and people do not meet the people in real life with whom they are making alliances and friends with.

While I can confidently state now I would not move to virtual world, I cannot say that about when I am older. The social benefits increase as you get older because in ten years I will not constantly be surrounded by friends everyday. I will be busy with a job and making an income and maybe even taking care of a family. Hanging out with my friends would become a luxury and a virtual world would provide me with an escape from everyday life.  I am unsure when exactly the tipping point will be, but I do know a lot of cultural views need to be changed (for example people need to make more money to support their virtual world addictions) until we see a mass exodus into virtual worlds. 

The Weapon of the People (Revised)

Facebook was started by nineteen-year-old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. He was a computer genius and had an innate talent for programming. His goal to create a website that would allow one to, “access information about anyone, and be a means for anyone to share anything that they wanted,” has turned into something that Zuckerberg never dreamed of  (Kirkpatrick 3). While Zuckerberg wanted to improve people’s lives socially, the extent to which he would eventually do so was never foreseen. Facebook currently has over five hundred million users and is the world’s, “second-most-visited site after Google”  (Kirkpatrick 1). With the recent conflicts and protests in the Middle East, Facebook has become a means of social media that facilitates mass communication and organization. It has become a catalyst in political change in the Middle East and Senator John McCain has called Mark Zuckerberg, “the most popular man in the Middle East” (Summers). While Facebook has promoted individual empowerment and become a way for young adults and teenagers to stay connected, Middle Eastern governments worry because they fail to understand that Facebook is a means for political change, not the cause. 

The Internet has become integrated in the lives of people all over the world and is used to develop local economies and to create jobs. The Internet is a sign of progress and sophistication; less developed countries use the Internet as a way to relate to more highly developed countries because it can promote rapid change in the future (Pinhanez). Young adults and teens in most all countries that have grown up during the age of the Internet have become computer literate. Governments support this type of education because it will help the future of their country if their youth has the same technological education as youth in a more highly developed country (Pinhanez). While the Internet and Facebook is used by people of all ages, young adults and teens use the site as a way to define who they are. The youth create an identity online and their profiles are extended versions of themselves. What groups they join, what videos they upload, and what pictures they are tagged in represent what they stand for as a person. Facebook’s dominance and popularity has grown exponentially. The idea of a participatory culture allows teenagers and young adults, through social media, to have affiliations, collaboratively solve problems, and have a way to express themselves (Jenkins 11). As the number of Internet users in the Middle Eastern continues to increase and the Internet becomes an integral part of society, teenagers and young adults have found ways to use these new popular social media methods to influence politics. 

Young adults and teens that have grown up during the age of computers have found ways to use the Internet to their advantage. Twenty per cent of the population in the Middle East is between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four (CBC). This youth bulge demonstrates the effectiveness of organizing through Facebook. Since people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four are computer literate and most all are using Facebook, the Internet is a vital tool to rally a group. While the protestors in the Middle East consisted of all ages and both genders, the instigators of the protests were the youth (Mousa).  Young adults and teens have discovered ways to use Facebook effectively. When a journalist asked a teenager what he was filming in Tunisia he replied, “Ourselves. Our revolution. We put it on Facebook. It’s how we tell the world what is happening” (Beaumont). Every teen and young adult, the future leaders of the world, has a say and opinion through new social media sites like Facebook. No longer is the only voice to be heard through a newspaper article or on the radio. Every teenager can voice their thoughts and then share it with a thousand of their Facebook friends. Ideas can now be shared across oceans. There has been a switch in the way young adults are starting revolutions. Alica Ygarza from Penn Point magazine states, “In the past revolutions were fought with swords and cannons. Unlike those revolutions, the latest in the Middle East are being run by young adults and teens via Facebook.” New voices of opinion can now be heard through the Internet without being a journalist or activist. New developments in social media like Facebook allow not only activists and demonstrators, but virtually anyone with an opinion to become involved with political change.  The idea of individual empowerment is the driving force behind why social media has been able to become so influential (Eltahawy). In these non-democratic regimes, Facebook makes everyone feel important, feel like their voice can be heard and that their opinion matters.

The reason Facebook has become so popular and become so heavily integrated in our culture is because of our need to stay connected. With the development of the Internet and new communication technologies, a new desire to be constantly in touch with everyone we meet has been formed. The fear of isolation is what drives Facebook and makes it so popular. In an interview with the Crimson, Zuckerberg said, “the nature of the site is that each user’s experience improves if they can get their friends to join it” (Kirkpatrick 7). Facebook is used so heavily because everyone that knows everyone uses the website as has become an increasingly, continuous trend. The movement away from a solitary culture to a more connected culture is the main reason that Facebook is so effective in starting mass revolts. For example a young man in Egypt states, “I can get two hundred thousand people in the square in two hours” (Summers). Facebook allows everyone to be more connected and instills a feeling of unity.

Facebook is a dominating force and Middle Eastern governments are weary as to how to proceed in controlling such an influential website. Middle Eastern governments already control the media and use propaganda, but they are becoming fearful that the people will soon become more powerful than the government. Lelia Hudson from Al Jazeera states, “The overall effect is the emergence of an interactive and dynamic transnational media infrastructure that is beyond the reach of most Middle East governments.” Facebook is an effective tool for the young adults and teenagers, not for governments as demonstrated thus far. The government, an older generation, while they use the Internet, do not use sites like Facebook in the way teenagers and young adults do, most likely because of the age gap. The government uses more transitional methods of creating political change (Beaumont).  However, they are becoming fearful because it has been shown that the user of Facebook is the one that wields the power. In Egypt for example, the youth that used Facebook to organize their revolution and pressure Hosni Mubarak to step down from power were more influential than the government that did not use social media. In addition, President Obama during the 2008 elections advertised using Facebook where as McCain did not. Obama seemed to relate more to the youth and spread his ideas more rapidly than McCain did, who advertised in more traditional ways (Dalsgaard). Obama’s campaign represents a success in social networking, but also a success in younger generations becoming more involved in politics. The youth can share their opinions and become more interested in an election if it is right in front of them, on a site they visit five times a day. The website serves as a bridge between an untouchable future president and an average teenager. Future leaders are turning toward Facebook to gain popularity and followers. 

The recent revolts and protests in Egypt and Saudi Arabi demonstrate that people’s opinion matter as they can create political change.

The ability for the people of the country to come together and organize in order to influence the stepping down of a president, as shown in Egypt, exemplify that the use of Facebook and social media is not something the government should take lightly. For example one method the government had to control Facebook was to shut down the Internet. In Egypt, the government turned off the switch, but in other cases the switch was never pulled, only considered as an option. Kaled Koubaa, president of the Internet Society in Tunisia, stated, “They wanted to close Facebook down in the first quarter of 2009, but it was very difficult. So many people were using it that it appears that the regime backed off because they thought banning it might actually cause more problems than leaving it” (Beaumont). Shutting down Facebook, as shown, is not a viable and effective option, but the government has yet to find an alternative way to control the flow of ideas through Facebook. Turing of the Internet switch exemplifies how fearful the government is in letting the rest of the world find out what is happening in their country (Etling). The Egyptian government, as shown in the video is taken drastic measures to control their people and exercise their authority by even killing innocent civilians. Egypt does not want the rest of the world to see them as killers or show how fearful they are in their people gaining power that the have succumbed to using barbaric measures. As Lelia Hudson from Al Jazeera vividly explains, “trying to kill the Internet and the mobile phone networks is like putting tanks on the street- it is a drastic move that tells everyone how threatened a government feels and is.” Middle Eastern governments have tried to shut down the Internet and have changed the passwords to people’s Facebook accounts, but nothing seems to be an effective end to the use of social media (Beaumont). Ethan Zuckerman from the New York Times states, “Authoritarian regimes cannot block political Facebook groups without blocking all the ‘American Idol’ fans and cat lovers as well. The government cannot imply shut down Facebook, because doing so would alert a large group of people who they can not afford to radicalize.” The Middle Eastern governments have not come up with an effective way to stop the monster they think Facebook has become. They have to become savvier in their means to shut down the use of Facebook or they have to be ready to accept their actions, for example the killing of citizen by the police that is posted on Facebook for the world to witness. The Middle Eastern governments have yet to understand that turning off the Internet switch fuels more young adults and teenagers to join the fight, instead of making them give up and be defeated (Eltahawy).

The Middle Eastern government fails to understand that their people want change. Citizens of these countries are tired of being oppressed are not going to become complacent, they plan to fight as demonstrated in Egypt. These new social media tools are the citizens’ weapons for this fight and they outnumber the government.  Middle Eastern governments have yet to understand that the best way to stop the uprisings and extensive use of Facebook is to listen to their people and work with them on the path toward a democracy. The Egyptians are tired and want a change in their government from being a dictatorship to a democracy (Mousa). The sharing of ideas through Facebook allows the ideas of democracy to be introduced to people in countries with oppressive regimes. For example, Egyptians  want political change because the feel they have oppressed for too long (for example the presence of the secret police) and denied basic rights like of freedom of speech and expression (the government censors the media and uses propaganda) and freedom of religion (Mousa). In an interview, Mona Elthahawy, a columnist and public speaker, states,  “the Internet did not invent courage in Egypt. The Internet did not invent activism in Egypt. But what April 6 was trying to do was attract a generation who recognize that they have no future in the country, no political future, no economic future under the Mubarak regime” (PBS).  Facebook was used as tool in this battle and the government has to understand that taking away one tool will just mean the people will find another way to fight. Facebook was a means to organize a revolt, but it did not spur political change, that came from the drive of the Egyptians. The government has to face their problems with their citizens and understand that Facebook was a weapon in the fight, not the reason for the revolution.

            In my research, I have not come across any information stating where the company of Facebook stands on this issue. I believe it is because they want to remain unbiased. While they might promote freedom and the use of their website in order to create social change, by declaring what side they are on would deter some users and make some upset with what Facebook is associated with. Facebook is remaining neutral in these uprisings in order to maintain their status as solely a website to connect people with other people and not one that is associated with certain political views.

            The future of Facebook is unknown. Zuckerberg never predicted it to become this powerful and in six years the site went from being a means to communicate and stay connected with other college students to a means to pressure a president to step down. The Middle East governments are most fearful of how to control Facebook at the rate it is growing. Since they have not succeeded, in the future they will try even harder to control the flow of ideas even more in attempt to demonstrate their power over their people (Etling). The government, if it were democratic, would support the general interest of the population. For example the United States does not use Facebook in the same way that people in Egypt do because protests of that size are not necessary when people have a voice in the government. As Facebook has proven to be effective, the people in, for example Egypt need to be cautious online as to not by manipulated by leaders that have their own agenda in mind. In addition, organizers through Facebook need to realize that Facebook is solely a tool for change and that human abilities/ desires and personal leadership are what drives change (Etling). In the future, while the aid of technology continuously improves, the idea of human skills should be remembered as the most important factor in creating political change. Cannons, nuclear weapons, Facebook are all tools used to fight, but without human leadership and a cause these weapons they would serve no useful purpose. 

Work Cited

Beaumont, Peter. " The Truth about Twitter, Facebook and the Uprisings in the Arab World.”  The

          

            Guardian. 25 Feb. 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world

Dalsgaard, Steffen. “Facework on Facebook: The Presentation of Self in Virtual Life and Its Role in the                      

            US Elections.” Anthropology Today 24 (2008): 8-12.

      Jstor. Web.13 March 2011.http://www.jstor.org/stable/20179963

Etling, Bruce and Robert Faris. “Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of

         Online Organizing.” Project Muse Volume 30, 2 (2010). Web. 27 March 2011.

         http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sais/summary/v030/30.2.etling.html 

Hudson, Lelia. " The Persistent Fear Base of Authoritarianism." AJE - Al

Jazeera English. 19 Mar. 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/

"Interview with Mona Eltahawy - Revolution in Cairo." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 27 

             Mar. 2011. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/revolution-in-cairo/interviews/mona-

             eltahawy.html>.

Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st 

             century. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. Print

Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect: the Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the        

             World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print.

“Middle East Demographics (Shift).” CBCradio. 28 January 11. Web. 1 April 2011.

             http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/01/28/middle-east-demographics/

Mousa, Hamza. Interview with Adem Memerkaya. “First Hand Account From Egypt Protests.” N.p.

              Web. 1 April 2011. http://hamzaed.com/20110318/first-hand- account-from-egypt-protests-

               interview-with-dr-hamza-mousa-about-what-is-happening-in-egypt.html

Pinhanez, Claudio. “Internet in Developing Countries: The Case of Brazil.” Research IMB.  Web. 1 

                April 2011.                                       

                http://www.research.ibm.com/people/p/pinhanez/publications/netbrasil.htm

Shaaban, Tamer. “The Most Amazing Video on the Internet.” Online Posting. Youtube.  27 January

                2011. Web. 1 April 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThvBJMzmSZI

Shapiro , Samantha. "Revolution, Facebook-Style - Can Social Networking

            Turn Young Egyptians Into a Force for Democratic Change?." The New York Times. 22 Jan. 

            2009. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25bloggers-t.html?  

            pagewanted=5>.

Smith, Catharine. “Egypt’s Facebook Revolution.”Huffington Post. Accessed 2 April 2011. 

            http://tiny.cc/xi0ws

Summers, Pat. "McCain: Zuckerberg Made Middle East Revolutions Possible. Fox News. 3 Mar. 2011.

                Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/03/03/mccain-zuckerberg-made

                middle-east-revolutions-possible >.

"The Changing Landscape of Middle East’s Media Consumption." Traffic.  27

      

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           Landscape-of-Middle-Easte28099s-Media-Consumption.aspx >.

Ygarza, Alicia . " Middle Eastern Teens Gather Via Facebook to Protest : Penn

          Points Online." Penn Manor School District. 8 Mar. 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.     

          <http://www.pennmanor.net/pennpoints/?p=19494>. 

Communication emerged as a means to stay in touch. People began with the idea of a letter delivered by the Pony express and soon after telegrams using Morse code. Dial telephone was invented next followed by the answering machine and improvement of landline phones. Radio and television begin to emerge as well. Soon these young inventions started transforming. Phones were able to make long distance calls, and later became wireless. The radio began to increase the number of channels available and later developed to AM and FM stations.  Television started to have many different networks and was able to be broadcasted instead of being shown live. Computers were invented and we entered into the world of technological development with the World Wide Web.

The present is a dependence on this array of communication technologies. People no longer use telegrams, but have an addiction to texting. Smartphone are more important than landlines and have the capability of a computer. Iphones, Blackberries and Droids are taking over the simplistic flip phones. Emails have completely replaced the written letter. The Internet is a way to stay in touch with friends through Facebook and twitter and Skype, but also a way to meet new friends through dating websites and online games like World of Warcraft.  We are becoming addicted to these technologies. Communication is slipping away from face to face contact and is more common through the use of a machine.

The future is unknown. When will we stop developing communication technologies? Is there an end in sight? Will we become too consumed that we live our life in the world of a matrix and have no human face-to-face contact? Will we completely separate ourselves from the natural world? The future is something to be feared, but we have to remember why we love these communication technologies. To simply communicate more extensively with our friends and family than before is a truthful reason, but we must enter the future with caution and not forgot how we used to survive without our Blackberry, without our MacBook Pro, without the Internet and Facebook.  These new communication technologies make our lives easier, but we should never forget what life used to be like and we should fear what life will be like if we do not remember the importance of the natural world and face to face contact.  

After reading the first third of Feed, I became scared. In no way do I want to live in a world where I have a computer chip in my head to the point where my head is not even considered an organ. While I think casually taking a trip to the moon for spring break sounds exhilarating, I would rather stick to a beach vacation than live with a feed. The one idea from Feed that made me afraid was the fact that everyone is equally super smart. I think that what distinguishes us from each other is our knowledge. Others are talented and smarter in some aspects of life than others, but that help defines who we are. I think the world become an extremely boring utopia if we all had the same knowledge. Anderson states, “you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now” (47).  The idea of hard work and dedication is completely lost in the new world. I was also upset by the fact that reading and writing had become obsolete. It has been ingrained in my head that a child first needs to read and write and then all education builds off of this. Without these fundamentals, the need for education and the desire for knowledge are gone. No wonder they think the moon and mars are boring. If you never had to try in life and everything you needed was in a computer chip in your head than everything would seem pretty mundane to me too. I also think I would become annoyed with the fact that any company or organization could send commercials and advertisements through the feed. For example, “…the cola with the refreshing taste of citrus and butter…”(26). In the book I become irritated that these ads disrupted the flow of writing and made me think that due to these commercials constantly bombarding one’s feed that everyone would be easily distracted and have a short attention span. While reading this book made me fearful and I found lots of examples of things that bothered me about life in the future, I am intrigued to learn more about the world these teenagers live in. 

The Weapon of the People

Facebook was started by a nineteen-year-old Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg. He was a computer genius and had an innate talent for programming. His goal to create a website that would allow one to, “access information about anyone, and be a means for anyone to share anything that they wanted,” has turned into something that Zuckerberg never dreamed of (3, Kirkpatrick). While Zuckerberg wanted to improve people’s lives socially the extent to which he would eventually do so was never foreseen. Facebook currently has over five hundred million users and is the world’s, “second-most-visited site after Google”  (Kirckpatrick, 1). With the recent conflicts and protests in the Middle East, Facebook has become a means of social media that facilitates mass communication and organization. It has become a catalyst in political change in the Middle East and Senator John McCain has called Mark Zuckerberg, “the most popular man in the Middle East” (Summers). While Facebook has promoted individual empowerment and become a way for young adults and teenagers to stay connect, Middle East governments fear how to control the website because they fail to understand that Facebook is a means for political change not the cause. 

Young adults and teens that want to be future leaders of the world need an education. While schools are not up to standard in Middle East, as schools are over crowded and teachers are not motivated to teach (as they are underpaid), most every young adult and teen is computer literate (Morrison, 3). Facebook is a site for young adults and teens that let them define who they are. They are able to create an identity online and their profile is an extended version of themselves. What groups they join, what videos they upload, and what pictures they are tagged in represent what they stand for as a person. Facebook’s dominance and popularity has grown exponentially. The idea of a participatory culture allow teenagers and young through social media to have affiliations, collaboritvely solve problems, and have a way to express themselves (Jenkins, 11). The bar graph represents the number of Internet users in the Middle East has grown by 1176.8 percent in eight years (Traffic). The Middle East has acquired the largest number of growth of Internet users in the world. As the number of Internet users in the Middle East continues to increase and the Internet becomes an integral part of society, teenagers and young adults have found ways to use these new popular social media methods to influence politics. 

Young adults and teens that have grown up during the age of computers have found ways to use the Internet to their advantage. When a journalist asked a teenager what he was filming in Tunisia he replied, “Ouselves. Our revolution. We put it on Facebook. It’s how we tell the world what is happening” (Beaumont). Every teen and young adult, the future leaders of the world, has a say and opinion through new social media sites like Facebook. No longer is the only to be heard through a newspaper article or on the radio. Every teenager can voice their thoughts and then share it with all of there a thousand Facebook friends. There has been a switch in the way young adults are starting revolutions. Alica Ygarza from Penn Point magezine states, “In the past revolutions were fought with swords and cannons. Unlike those revolutions, the latest in the Middle East are being run by young adults and teens via Facebook” (Ygarza). New voices of opinion can now be heard through the Internet without being a journalist or activist. New developments in social media like Facebook allow not only activists and demonstrators, but virtually anyone with an opinion to become involved with political change.  The idea of individual empowerment is the driving force behind why social media has been able to become so influential (Eltahawy). 

The reason Facebook has become so popular and become so heavily integrated in our culture is because of our need to stay connected. With the development of the Internet and new communication technologies, a new desire to be constantly in touch with everyone we meet has been formed. This desire is what drives Facebook and makes it so popular. In an interview with the Crimson, Zuckerberg said, “the nature of the site is that each user’s experience improves if they can get their friends to join it” (Kirkpatrick, 7). Facebook is used so heavily because everyone that knows everyone uses the website; and the feeling of being left out of something that has become so integrated in our culture drives us to use the social media technologies to the extent of which we do.  The movement away from a solitary culture to a more connected culture is the main reason that Facebook is so effective in starting mass revolts. For example a young man in Egypt states, “I can get two hundred thousand people in the square in two hours” (Summers). Facebook is powerful and the single most efficient and effective website to connect people with each other even around the world.

Facebook is a dominating force and Middle East governments are weary as to how to proceed in controlling such a powerful website. Middle East governments want to work to promote freedom of speech and expression, but they are becoming fearful that the people will soon become more powerful than the government. Lelia Hudson from Al Jazeera states, “The overall effect is the emergence of an interactive and dynamic transnational media infrastructure that is beyond the reach of most Middle East governments” (Hudson). Facebook is an effective tool for the young adults and teenagers, not for governments as demonstrated thus far. Middle East governments have not found a use for the website, but they are becoming fearful because it has been shown that the user of Facebook is the one that wields the power. In Egypt for example, the people that used Facebook to organize their revolution and pressure Hosni Mubarak to step down from power were more influential than the government that did not use social media. In addition, President Obama during the 2008 elections advertised using Facbook where as McCain did not. Obama seemed to relate more to the youth and spread his ideas more rapidly than McCain did, who advertised in more traditional ways (Dalsgaard).

The recent revolt in Egypt and Saudi Arabi demonstrate that people’s opinion matter as they can create political change. The ability for the people of the country to come together and organize in order to influential the stepping down of a president as shown in Egypt exemplify that the use of Facebook and social media is not something the government should take lightly. For example one method the government had to controlling Facebook was to shut down the Internet. Kaled Koubaa, president of the Internet Society in Tunisia, stated, “They wanted to close Facebook down in the first quarter of 2009, but it was very difficult. So many people were using it that it appears that the regime backed off because they thought banning it might actually cause more problems than leaving it” (Beaumont). Shutting down Facebook as shown, is not a viable and effective option, but the government has yet to find an alternative way to control the flow of ideas through Facebook.  As Lelia Hudson from Al Jazeera vividly explains, “trying to kill the Internet and the mobile phone networks is like putting tanks on the street- it is a drastic move that tells everyone how threatened a government feels and is.” Middle East governments have tried to shut down the Internet and changed the passwords to people’s Facebook accounts, but nothing seems to be an effective end to the use of social media. Ethan Zuckerman from the New York Times states, “Authoritarian regimes can not block political Facebook groups without blocking all the ‘American Idol’ fans and cat lovers as well. The government can not simply shut down Facebook, because doing so would alert a large group of people who they can not afford to radicalize” (Zuckerman). The Middle East governments have not come up with an effective way to stop the monster they think Facebook has become. They have to become savvier in their means to shut down the use of Facebook or they have to be ready to accept their actions, for example the killing of citizen by the police that is posted on Facebook for the world to witness. The Middle East governments have yet to understand that turning off the Internet switch fuels more young adults and teenagers to join the fight, instead of making them give up and be defeated (Eltahawy).

The Middle East government fails to understand that their people want change. Citizens of these countries are tired of being oppressed are not going to become complacent, they plan to fight as demonstrated in Egypt. These new social media tools are the citizens’ weapons for this fight and they outnumber the government.  Middle East governments have yet to understand that the best way to stop the uprisings and extensive use of Facebook is to listen to their people and work with them in a democracy. While the Middle East governments might regret educating their youth in becoming computer literate, “the Internet did not invent courage in Egypt. The Internet did not invent activism in Egypt. But what April 6 was trying to do was attract a generation who recognize that they have no future in the country, no political future, no economic future under the Mubarak regime” (Eltahawy).  Facebook was used as tool in this battle and the government has to understand that taking away one tool will just mean the people will find another way to fight. Facebook was a means to organize a revolt, but it did not spur political change that was the drive of the Egyptians. The government has to face their problems with their citizens and understand that Facebook was a weapon in the fight, not the reason with the revolution.

The future of Facebook is unknown. Zuckerberg never predicted it to become this powerful and in six years the site went from being a means to communicate and stay connected with other college students to a means to pressure a president to step down. The Middle East governments are most fearful of how to control Facebook at the rate it is growing. Since they have not succeeded in the future they will try even harder to control the flow of ideas even more in attempt to demonstrate their power over their people (Etling). This will just make the people more upset and fuel their drive to revolt, which the Middle East governments have yet to understand. Facebook leaves power in the hands of the people and has been an important asset in creating political change and might continue to be even more influential in the future. In this battle for control over the Internet it is unsure who will win in the end.

Work Cited 

Beaumont, Peter. " The Truth about Twitter, Facebook and the Uprisings in

            the Arab World.”  The Guardian. 25 Feb. 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.

            http://www.guardian.co.uk/world

Dalsgaard, Steffen. “Facework on Facebook: The Presentation of Self in Virtual

Life and Its Role in the US Elections.” Anthropology Today 24 (2008): 8-12.

Jstor. Web.13 March 2011.http://www.jstor.org/stable/20179963

Etling, Bruce and Robert Faris. “Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and

Promise of Online Organizing.”    Project Muse Volume 30, 2 (2010). Web. 27 March 2011. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sais/summary/v030/30.2.etling.html

Hudson, Lelia. " The Persistent Fear Base of Authoritarianism." AJE - Al

Jazeera English. 19 Mar. 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/

"Interview with Mona Eltahawy - Revolution in Cairo." PBS: Public

            Broadcasting Service. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.

            <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/revolution-in-

            cairo/interviews/mona-eltahawy.html>.

Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. Print

Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect: the Inside Story of the Company that is

Connecting the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print.

Morrison , Heidi. "Children and Youth in History, Education in the Middle

            East." Center for History and New Media. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.

<http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching

modules/459?section=primarysources&source=468>.

Shapiro , Samantha. "Revolution, Facebook-Style - Can Social Networking

Turn Young Egyptians Into a Force for Democratic Change?." The New York Times. 22 Jan. 2009. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25bloggers-t.html?pagewanted=5>.

Summers, Pat. "McCain: Zuckerberg Made Middle East Revolutions Possible."

            Fox News. 3 Mar. 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.

<politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/03/03/mccain-zuckerberg-made middle-east-revolutions-possible >.

"The Changing Landscape of Middle East’s Media Consumption." Traffic.  27

Sept. 2009. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://www.wewanttraffic.com/news/post/The-Changing-Landscape-of-Middle-Easte28099s-Media-Consumption.aspx >.

Ygarza, Alicia . " Middle Eastern Teens Gather Via Facebook to Protest : Penn

Points Online." Penn Manor School District. 8 Mar. 2011. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://www.pennmanor.net/pennpoints/?p=19494>. 

Would you take the blue pill or the red pill? Would you rather live in blissful ignorance or find out the truth of the world we live in? In the Matrix, Neo has to make this decision and without a long hesitation, he chooses the red pill. I understand why he would want to take the red pill. The red pill is a representation of curiosity. Neo as shown in the movie seems like he has nothing to lose. He isn’t portrayed as having a family or friends or living happily. Along with curiosity and his lack of connection to the world he is in now there is the idea of temptation. The red pill is enticing and promises adventure and is also a way for Neo to get his questions answered. The blue pill would be taken if Neo was content with his life and did not want to change his life. In addition, if he preferred to live in innocence and go back to almost being like a child, protected and obliviously to the dangers and realities of the world, he would take the red pill. If he at all feared what his life would be like if he decided to run with Morpheus he would also choose the red pill. While Neo takes the red pill and is swept up into a life with adventure and action, I would choose the blue pill. I would want to live in the same world I am now and “believe whatever I want to believe.” In one way the blue pill is an avoidance of pain and reality. Everyday we are given the choice between the red pill and the blue pill. We can become informed citizens and read the newspaper, listen to the radio, and watch the news and know what is happening in the world in terms of like war, natural disasters, political conflicts, famine, and economic problems or we could take the blue pill and not be informed of any real world issues. The blue pill lets us live in complete ignorance and innocence and it is a choice we have to make everyday.    

Facebook and Changes in Politics

Facebook is growing exponentially. It started with the intention that it would function as a website to connect college kids with each other, it grew in the number of users to connect high school students, then older generations, and finally as a means to stay in touch with everyone in the world. Facebook has become a way of communicating that Mark Zuckerberg would have never imagined. I am interested in researching the different uses of Facebook and how it has evolved to become such a powerful means of communication. Facebook has recently been in the news lately and has been a key component in political decisions especially in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. I want to find out why the government reacts the way they do to the use of Facebook. Even though the government fears Facebook and its power, I believe Facebook has evolved in a positive way to create widespread change and influence. Despite the potential hazards of Facebook, I think the website is more beneficial than harmful. I think in terms of a revolt or revolution Facebook is one of the best options in organizing mass groups of supporters. I want to answer the questions: How has Facebook emerged? Why has Facebook become so popular and so widely used to organize mass demonstrations? How has the use of Facebook led to changes in politics? Would there be the same political outcomes without Facebook? Why does the government fear Facebook? The hurdles I have faced thus far are finding evidence on current events as there are only limited news articles. I am having trouble finding ones that give me a full detailed story (I can find brief articles, but I am looking for in depth reports) of the accounts that took place in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Based on my research thus far Facebook has emerged to become the leader and key component in influencing changes in politics, but outside the United States the government is looking to put a stop to the usage.

Annotated Bibliography

Couts, Andrew ."Egypt’s ‘Facebook Generation’ Pressures Mubarak to Step Down."

Technology News, Product Reviews, Software Downloads, Digital Trends. 11

Feb. 2011. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. http://digitaltrends.com/social-media

A campaign to influence Mubarak to step down was started by one man through Facebook. Even when Egypt shut down the Internet, people found ways to share with the rest of the world what was happening through phoning into Google to post their tweets and sending in videos of the violence to upload. This article discusses how a revolution was started through Facebook. Facebook was able to influence the political system by organizing mass groups of people. I am interested for my project to look at the ways in which Facebook can have an impact on the government and how change is now a mass movement through the Internet because our world is more connected by technology.

Dalsgaard, Steffen. “Facework on Facebook: The Presentation of Self in Virtual Life and

Its Role in the US Elections.” Anthropology Today 24 (2008): 8-12. Jstor. Web.

13 March 2011.http://www.jstor.org/stable/20179963

This article discusses how Facebook allows us to present ourselves as individuals. It also examines how political power can be gained from the use of Facebook especially in the campaign with President Obama. His popularity and number of supporters grew through his use of advertising on the Internet and using websites like Facebook. I am interested to look at the latter part of this article and compare and contrast the use of Facebook by Presidents to gain political power the use of Facebook by people in a country to gain power to change politics, as it seems the user of Facebook is the one that creates change.

Deibert, Ronald, and Rafal Rohozinski. “Liberation versus Control.” Journal of

Democracy: Project Muse Volume 21, 4 (2010). Web 13 March 2011.

http://z3950.muse.jhu.edu/journals/

This article argues that the use of the Internet lies between a technology of liberation and a technology of control and is more complex than associating it with one title. The Internet can create boundless opportunities, but also contains us. It argues that human thinking can use technology in ways the creator never intended. For my project I want to look at the uses of the Internet, especially Facebook and how it has shaped the society we have become in terms of defining what type of technology the Internet is. 

"Facebook Revolt Descends Upon Saudi Arabia." One India News, 11 Mar. 2011. Web.

14 Mar. 2011. http://news.oneindia.in

      This article mentions a situation in Saudi Arabia similar to the one in Egypt. It provides another example of protestors organizing through Facebook to create political change. Facebook has become one of the most powerful means of communication and this page created by protestors got 30,000 followers in Saudi Arabia and proves to be the easiest way to rally the population. In this case, government officials used firearms to break up the protest. I want to use different examples of revolts in my project and examine the way in which the government chooses to react.

Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect: the Inside Story of the Company that is

Connecting the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print.

Kirkpatrick provides an account of the history of Facebook. He examines how it started back in a dorm room to how it has grown to be one of the most popular and widely used websites. For my project I am interested in how a nineteen year old Harvard student was able to create a website so powerful. I want to incorporate the history and development of Facebook as background knowledge for my project.

York, Jillian. " The Dangers of Social Media Revolt - Opinion - Al Jazeera English ."

AJE - Al Jazeera English. 9 Mar. 2011. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. http://english.aljazeera.net

This article mentions the repercussions people face when using Facebook to start a revolt. There are potential risks such as the government being able to hack into your account and government spying, but in general the benefits of using Facebook to organize something like a protest are more important to consider than the potential risks. I am interested to see the government reacts to the widespread use of Facebook and how fearful they are of what Facebook enables a group of people or even one person to accomplish. For my project I want to examine the ways in which governments are acting to stop the spread of Facebook and also consider the potential risks involved in using Facebook.

While I was reading the “Unabomber’s Manifesto”, I was reminded of Second Skin. For example I would now describe gaming as a surrogate activity. Gaming is described as an activity that, “adequately satisfies no matter how much effort one makes” (17).  Why do people game for eight hours a day, rather than spend time with their children or with their spouses? The answer is because they are never satisfied. The development of technology as Kaczynski points out makes us feel that we need to have a goal and that we need to find a way to spend our time. Our time is spent in surrogate activities instead of how it we used to spend countless hours for instance on the farm trying to sustain our food supply. Our new goals are not necessary to sustain our life; they are fillers to distract us from things like the natural world. And while I engage in surrogate activities, I do not believe it is considered, “demeaning to fulfill one’s need for the power process through surrogate activities or through identification with an organization, rather then through pursuit of real goals” (26). Kaczynski goes on to discuss that surrogate activities define who we are instead of what really matters in life. People say they are gamers and I would say I am a lacrosse player, but this Kaczynski argues is because we have become over socialized. Our constant need to stay in touch with everyone around us makes us less of an individual and less autonomous. Our desire to identify with a larger organization partly clenches our need for power and/or goals (24). Surrogate activities and identifying with a big group act as a power process. Kaczynski argues that we used to fulfill the power process without these types of things because we could act autonomously. I disagree with Kaczynski and think that surrogate activities are useful. While I agree they make us over socialized and take us away from the natural world and maybe even real goals, I think surrogate activities provide us with healthy opportunities to make friends, discover things we are talented at, and are used as outlets from stress. I think that surrogate activities should be used in modernization as spending eight hours a day is too excessive, but I think these “non-real goals” are actually beneficial to our lives. For example if my surrogate activity is running and my goal is to be able to run a half marathon, I would spend countless hours outside in the summer working toward my goal. I believe this time spent outside (with the natural world) and fitness regime is beneficial. While Kaczynski thinks surrogate activities disrupt the power process, I think the benefits of certain activities outweigh the harmfulness of them. We might not be completely autonomous as Kaczynski would like, but we do discover our talents and potential through these activities. I would advocate for a healthy balance of surrogate activities and spending time alone to work on our problem of over socialization. Gamers should keep on gaming as long as it is in moderation.