The Digital Generation's Own Revolution--Iran

For a technological troglodyte like myself, I was thrilled by the fax revolutions of the 1980s in Eastern Europe and Russia. During the seige in Russia, when Boris Yeltsin stood on tops of the tanks and faced the Russian army down, I personally received faxes from within the Russian parliament building with instructions to circulate them to the American media to solicit support for the new Russian Revolution. This cumbersome mechanism gave the impression then of political change at the speed of light. Internet later came in and recently the use of cellphones in the Ukraine, Georgia and Zimbabwe. Cellphones were meant for internal organizing outside the communications infrastructure erected by the authoritarian regimes. They did not have the global transmission abilities that we are now seeing in Iran.

The Iranian regime has been perfecting cyber-warfare for the past several years. My own computer has been attacked via the Chinese software "Rain" by the Tehran regime. The regime along with China and other authoritarian governments have spent millions on cyber-warfare to block internet efforts to support groups fighting to build pockets of pluralism within these societies. Farsi is now the number 3 language used on the internet and videocam productions have been shown both ways over the last few years concerning human rights and democracy issues. One group actually has hosted seminars on constitutional and law issues from France, which are broadcast into Iran. No one has been able to judge these efforts until now. Los Angeles, which hosts thousands of Iranians, has been a prime source of movie entertainment downloaded into Tehran.

I have not posted anything for the past ten days because of I've been mesmerized by the campaign in Iran and the aftermath of the protests by the Green Revolution. The most appropriate reference book for this new Iranian Revolution is Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World by Don Tapscott (McGraw Hill, 2009, $27.95). In the largest study of a generation ever conducted, Tapscott surveyed 11,000 people from the ages 16 to 29, building on his previous work when he surveyed the group of 13-20 year olds for his previous book on Growing Up Digital. This global study was premised on the fact that there was a generation ,which was now coming of age which grew up with digital technology and had thoroughly integrated it into their lives in ways the rest of us could only imagine.

In the next to last chapter of the book, he talks about the net generation and democracy. Within the United States, this generation moved from an apathy toward party politics into full participation in the 2008 campaign, particularly for Barack Obama. Previous to this, the net generation had been active in grassroots community efforts for specific causes or simply as charitable works. Tapscott finished his book in the middle of the 2008 campaign noting that the net generation brought its digital savvy to the Obama campaign through its creative use of Facebook and social networking through the internet. He called the Obama campaign the first campaign of the Digital Generation.

With the dramatic demographic shifts in Iran, some of the same net generation features have shown up to dominate the current Revolution. Activists abroad petitioned Twitter to move their maintance period of the network until 4 am Tehran time so the continued flow of twitter messages could continue to come though to the rest of the world. Cellphones, particularly with video features, played a critical role in relaying the visual images of the Revolution to the outside world. As the regime cracked down on the domestic reformist press and cut down on the foreign media access to cover the country, the Iranian activists have ably filled in the vacuum, playing on several different technologies at once. How much of the internal communication between cities is being done by looping back around foreign networks is hard to tell.

By midday Tuesday, the regime clearly has not been able to create the media blackout of events we have seen in past times. The persistance of communication with the rest of the world has played a critical role in fragmenting the political, religious and security elites of the country. The whole legitimacy of the Supreme Leader has been challenged because of the open information he had quietly contacted the opposition telling them they had won and only hours later proclaiming Ahmadinejad the winner in a very unlikely landslide. It's as if Khamenei had been Youtubed with past comments being contrasted with the present. This became obvious by the emergence of other Ayatollahs emerging to assert the need for a recount or another election altogether. Even seminarians from Qom made their way to Tehran to present petitions of support for the Green Revolution. Through YouTube and Twitter, the digital generation plunged the Islamic Republic into its greatest crisis of legitimacy since the early turmoil after the initial Revolution.

There are many websites here that have been marvelous. Andrew Sullivan at Atlantic began blogging at dawn on election day and has added material ever since. Huffington Post has done a fantastic job of keeping readers abreast with the twitter feed. Dailykos has provided access to orginal Farsi sources throughout this period and several of its bloggers have added links to a variety of sources--large and obscure.

Is Mousavi the Vaclav Havel of Iran? No. He has a long past with involvement in some of the regime's bloodiest episodes. But after a period of political inactivity, he re-entered Iranian politics with a more reformist position. Does he want to change the institutions of the Islamic Republic? No or else he won't be allowed to run in the election. But, we should remember Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as a Communist but ended by dismembering the Soviet Union and removing the Communist party from the controlling position in the political structure. I am sure Mousavi had no clue of the depth of the resistance to the regime. I believe he was as taken by surprise as the regime was.

It is as if the great student movement of the 1990s that closed the country down for a whole month has re-surfaced with the arsenal provided by the net generation. What if they triumph, what does it mean? On the international front, Mousavi has already told Time magazine he is willing to negotiate the nuclear issue. During the campaign, he criticized Ahmadinejad's foreign adventurism, which probably means Mousavi will reign in Hizbullah in Lebanon and support like Khatami, his reformist predecessor, a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine issue. At home, it would mean greater freedoms for the Iranian people but not alot of economic progress. Ultimately, it would mean a normalization of relations with the United States.

For the largest issues concerning the nature of the Islamic Republic, I think time will tell whether the other parts of the 7 point demands could actually be met--the removal of the Supreme leader, the review of the constitution and other fundamental changes.

For now the Digital Generation might have to be content to have fragmented the establishment and set the stage for a future transformation.

This is not an inconsiderable achievement for a bunch of people who twitter.