Taliban YouTube Channel: New Entry in the Dark Side of New New Media

This is the third post in my continuing series, What's Newer Than New New Media, published in different blogs, which examines developments in the world of blogging, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc - what I call "new new media" - since the publication of New New Media in September 2009.

Fareed Zakaria had a short, instructive, piece on his GPS CNN show today – October 18, 2009 (see video below) – about the new Taliban YouTube station, Istqlalmedia. This brings home a crucial point I make in “The Dark Side of New New Media” (chapter 13, appropriately enough, of New New Media, published in September): the same access to Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook which allows protesters to get out word about government abuse and crackdowns – as with the protesters in Iran this past June – can also be used by terrorists to plan attacks, and by terrorist groups to ply propaganda.

The general principle here is that all technologies are like knives – they can be used to cut food, in the hands of good people, and used to cut people, in the hands of the bad. Actually, in the hands of a surgeon, a knife that cuts is a good thing. But a pillow, presumably innocent, can be used to suffocate someone. And a gun, often used for bad purposes, can be a valuable weapon against crime, or just to hunt food. The ultimate value or danger of any technology, in other words, depends upon how we humans use it.

New new media are no different. Terrorists may have coordinated their attacks via texting in the attack on Mumbai last year. The U.S. Army warned about the use of Twitter by terrorists in a report at the end of last year.

Zakaria raised another significant point – a prime irony – about the Taliban YouTube station. They are group at war with the modern age, using one of the most salient media of the modern age on behalf of their battle. This is an hypocrisy which critics of technology, criminal and civilized, have long been subject to. Jacques Ellul wrote a now classic book, Propaganda, in which he argued that all media – including products of the printing press – were intrinsically, inevitably, and always vehicles of propaganda. So why we should pay any attention to Ellul’s inevitably propagandistic book?

But we do, and the Taliban YouTube station will likely get lots of views. In the end, the best we can do is use the advantages of new new media to call these hypocrisies out.




See also:

What's Newer Than New New Media, Post 1, about Amazon, 1984, and the Kindle

What's Newer Than New New Media, Post 2, FTC Wrong to Fine Deceitful Bloggers

Bill Gates Interviewed by Fareed Zakaria

I just saw Bill Gates interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on his new CNN Sunday show.

I've always been a supporter of Gates and how he changed America and the world with his vision. Indeed, I opposed the U.S. government's anti-monopoly campaign against Microsoft to the point of publishing "Leave Microsoft Alone" in the June 8, 1998 issue of The Industry Standard. (See my Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium, pp. 88-91, if you have difficulty locating that article.) My view, which hasn't changed, is that the very nature of the Internet, in which anyone can become a star, a millionaire, make an important contribution to the growth of knowledge, means that no corporation, however powerful, can really dominate it. Gates through Windows and the Internet gave everyone the best means of competing with him. Even if he had had a monopoly on the medium (which he did not), that medium made it utterly impossible for anyone to monopolize thoughts and ideas.

Zakaria's talk with Gates today is the longest and best I have ever seen Gates interviewed.

Among the points Gates covered:

.The US is not in such bad shape in our current credit meltdown and bailout crisis. We are still and will very likely continue to be leaders in information technology innovation - and in the higher education that makes that possible. (Gates is famously a Harvard dropout, but that doesn't stop him from seeing the value of education where needed.)

.Gates does not believe in leaving huge sums of money to his descendants - in fact, where philanthropy doesn't work, he's in favor of greatly increasing inheritance taxes. (I'm in favor of no taxes to anyone making less than a million dollars a year, but increased taxes for everyone making more - see I'm A Progressive Libertarian.)

.Gates was delighted to discover from his worldwide charitable work that when child mortality is reduced, the population does not increase. This is because parents in poor countries are likely to have fewer children when they know their kids will survive.

.Gates welcomes the competition of Google and Apple, and any one else who can come along with new ideas and alternatives to our current world of new media (which I call new new media). He talked about smart walls and cellphones you could use to make digital copies of receipts.

All in all, a fine 30-minute interview on Fareed Zakaria, GPS (Global Public Square). I've seen Tony Blair, Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama, and now Bill Gates on the show since it debuted in June. It's become one of my favorite interview shows, and I'd say Zakaria is becoming the Charlie Rose and the Mark Molaro of cable.