Disobedience and Obedience in the Information Age

-- By ConnorHasson - 21 Oct 2024

Overview

The internet and technologies derived from it have increased the ability for both social obedience and disobedience. Whereas previously it was difficult to muster critical masses of people in a quick manner that was also widespread for a protest or something of the like; now, through the internet, garnering support of the likeminded is much easier than it was previously. Furthermore, disobedience through hacking to disrupt institutions that an organization or group might oppose is now possible. Whereas before the internet, means to dismantle or harm an institution or corporate entity that a small group opposed to them was difficult and required largely physical action. Now, hacker groups can devastate an entity they oppose in a decentralized manner that doesn’t require the physical aspect that it did before. On the other hand, as the internet grows more advanced and we stray further from the earlier, more innocent days of the internet, it has become a commercial behemoth. This has made tracking potential dissidences easier and created a society more passive and accepting of intrusions into their privacy.

These are not self-evident propositions. The more you know the more likely you are to have some "buts" and "howevers" in response to these claims. And you have not given the reader a sense of where you are going with them. Almost 20% of the way through and we don't yet know what your point is. When you have not focused the reader's attention and have raised subsidiary doubts that you don't intend to satisfy, your "overview" has not succeeded well.

Disobedience

The ability to grow unrest in the digital age is unparalleled in history with the speed and coordination that the internet and social media has allowed us.

This seems to you self-evident, I guess. But Chinese history contains levels of social disorder utterly outside the limits of other human social experience. There are centuries of Chinese history in which peasant rebellions occur more often than once an hour for years at a time. It's still not clear why you need to make such large claims, because we still don't know exactly what you are writing about.

Furthermore, the cyberspace has created another front with which disobedience can play a role. This space grows every day in importance as more and more of the world's economic role is played out in this realm. These two confluences have changed the game when it comes disobedience against corporate, educational, and state entities.

Connectivity

Consider the Arab Spring, the George Floyd Protests, or the protests against Israeli actions in Gaza. While there was going to be disobedience in these events anyways, the speed and size and the coalitions put together for these events would have been difficult to replicate in a prior time without access to internet, cellular devices, and social media. Of course, there had been successful and worthy protest movements in the past, but the speed that struggles in the modern age can put together because of the internet and its supplements, modern movements can organize with size, speed, and scale like no time before it. In this way, the internet has become a great tool for harnessing grievances of people disparate in the real world but can come together and fight in a way that was not possible before.

Is that what the history of the 20th century shows? An absence of mass political mobilizations before the Net? I think you are inventing the past to suit your interpretation of the present.

Skilled Groups

Another way disobedience is harnessed through the internet is with hackers and attacks on cyber infrastructure.

People who use the word "hacker" this way aren't hackers. People who are tend to resent it.

Disobedience like this makes a large impact, and for better or worse, is more possible with fewer people if they are skilled with technology.

Than if they aren't? Is that like military?

Hacking groups can make huge statements and cause mass disruption with small numbers. That was less likely in the past because small groups of far-flung people could not impact huge corporations or state entities at the level these groups can. People operating in a hacker cooperative can be from all over the world, can be from any background as long as they are technologically sophisticated, which can be self-taught or informally learned. This puts a lot more power in the hands of everyday people, and allows for them to protest and disrupt the organizations or state entities that

Does it really? Do you have some way of showing that to any skeptical reader?

they oppose. Whether their grievances are valid is a question for another time, but there is little doubt that the internet and its connectivity allow for powerful forms of disobedience that is in the hands of a large amount of the populace around the world.

Obedience

There is another side to this coin, though. As has been much discussed in class, that as the information age has progressed, corporations and state powers around the world have seemingly gained the upper hand over control of technology, specifically the cyberspace of the internet and its progeny, like smartphones. In the earlier days of the internet, it was chaotic and decentralized, there was less oversight in tracking, listening, etc., all functions that various state and corporate entities operate, ostensibly in the name of profit or security. People around the world accepted the increased intrusions into their privacy in large part because the intrusions came with increased functionality and ease of use of the devices, at least from the corporate perspective. This type of obedience is more forced, and can be leveraged by states when they deem it necessary – a bar that depends country to country. Another, more passive way is through the capture that this increased corporatism may cause people to be more passive in their lives and thus more obedient. Escaping to cyberspace instead of facing the reality around them and attempting to change its structure.

Conclusion

The effect that the internet and its progeny have has on obedience and disobedience is mixed. On one hand, it can be of assistance to causes in organizing and disseminating information throughout the causes at speeds never before seen. People can organize at breakneck speed and attempt to change the world around them. But on the other hand, it provides so much information to entities that have a stake in the established order that they have more information and thus ability to break up any disobedience because of information gathered with these new tools. Further, increased passivity because of the internet’s tools and playthings that have become commonplace may lead to increased passivity and more obedience in society/less disobedience.

I think the best route to improvement is to take the generalities that populate this draft and focus the social analysis on some question that leads to a conclusion more definite than "the effect that the internet and its progeny have ha[d] on obedience and disobedience is mixed." Let's try a draft that is about something, and in order to write which we have to learn something. There aren't any other writers or their ideas in this draft, no technical or political context, no law. Some step in any of those directions would require effort, show commitment, and therefore represent improvement.

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