This is the best response (from someone on IRC) to this (simplistic) claim about net access and revolt in Egypt featured in the New York Times:
[m] “In a widely circulated American Political Science Association conference paper, Yale scholar Navid Hassanpour argues that shutting down the internet made things difficult for sustaining a centralized revolutionary movement in Egypt. But, he adds, the shutdown actually encouraged the development of smaller revolutionary uprisings at local levels where the face-to-face interaction between activists was more intense and the mobilization of inactive lukewarm
[m] maybe we’ll have some more fiber optic cable cuts in silicon valley and then the revolution will happen
I did see that article and thought it was noteworthy. Forcing things to be more local and less centralized. Where ‘more centralized’ implies more easily surveiled via facebook/twitter/gmail/ymail which have centralized repositories that are law-enforcement/secret police accessible. If there was net accees, Diaspora & statusnet would have been a better choice. But the idea that net revolution that’s too easy means that less motivated people can ‘take part’ vs doing someone ‘on the ground’ is evident.
Comment by kevix — September 10, 2011 @ 2:00 pm