Grand visions must be grounded in reality

I am amazed by how long it takes some people to grasp what to others seems like the most self-evident statement possible. Yes, there are people who still fix you with their eyes, and tell you in all seriousness: “This internet thing ­ it’s going to be quite big.”

And so to our prime minister, and his turn at the recent propellerhead TED conference in Oxford. I can see your heads falling to your hands already.

But despite treading a well-worn path, Brown was dynamic and passionate ­ yes, really ­ about the power of the web to affect politics and build a global moral ethic.

He cited some compelling examples: monks blogging in Burma about military dictatorship and the use of Twitter and YouTube to co-ordinate the election protests in Iran this summer.

These incidents allow public empathy with those they would not otherwise meet ­ breaking down barriers and allowing cross-cultural exchange like never before, thus building empathy and concern over repressive regimes that newspapers can not convey.

Or so the rhetoric goes. Undoubtedly, such images and communication tools have an effect. The internet has clearly revolutionised the world of commerce as well as the worlds of news, advertising and creative media.

But is it all for the good? The striking thing about every example cited above is that no change was enacted in any of these cases. Repression of free speech remains an issue. Burma’s military dictatorship still stands, as does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s contentious election victory.

Furthermore, many will tell you that the internet offers unparalleled opportunities for fraud, illegal downloading of copyrighted material, the purveying of child pornography, state surveillance and the widespread collection of personal information. And worse. A House of Lords select committee report found it to be a “Wild West” ­ almost completely lawless and without any kind of authority.

Evgeny Morozov, another speaker at the TED conference, told of how some dictatorships have survived the internet challenge ­ and even become more oppressive.

He cited a classic error in Western media’s evangelising on the power of the internet that he calls “iPod liberalism” ­ the assumption that every Iranian and Chinese person who happens to love their iPod will also love liberal democracy. Those who use technology will use it for bad as well as good.

As Morozov pointed out, during the recent protests in Iran, the public nature of Twitter and blogs allowed the government to gather crowd-sourced intelligence easily. Added to this example could be the case of cyberspace attacks on Estonia and Georgia in recent years, seemingly launched from Russia.

The internet is another plane of existence, offering huge possibilities for improved communication. But it will not bring about change for good by itself as Brown claims because humans project their faults onto it as much as their strengths.

The web will be used for crime, repression, commerce and expression just as the real world is. This is often easy to forget when you work with people who frequently use new media.

So what is the solution? How can we bend the web to be used for good? Should we regulate it?

The answer lies in the real world, not online. It is not the internet’s fault that pornography exists. Or state repression. It is a tool for good as well as bad, but restricting the effectiveness of the tool one way or the other will not solve the problem.

Dictators must be challenged by live protests; the social conditions that make the life of a fraudster the only option must be improved; China must be pressured to allow freedom of speech. Only then will we have an internet that creates Brown’s global morality.

By Tom Young