Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart – President Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel have jointly blamed the disruptive influence of the Internet for their political losses, and have demanded more government control of emerging technology.
Obama and Angela Merkel Blame Internet and Social Media for Disrupting Globalism
President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are blaming the internet for disrupting the forces of globalism, suggesting that technology is making it more difficult to unite people behind a common purpose.
“Because of the internet and communications, the clash of cultures is much more direct,” Obama said during a press conference on his trip to Berlin. “People feel, I think, less certain about their identity. Less certain about economic security.”
Obama predicted that the rise of technology needed to be managed to give world citizens more control, beyond the simplistic answers found online.
His German counterpart agreed.
“Digitization is a disruptive force, a disruptive technological force that brings about deep-seated change, transformation of a society,” Merkel added.
She compared the internet to the invention of the printing press, citing the consequences it had on industrialized countries.
“It took a while until societies learned how to find the right kind of policies to contain this and to manage and steer this,” she said.
…
President Obama didn’t used to worry so much about the internet, back in the days when the internet helped Obama win office.
To his credit Obama also spent a fair part of his speech emphasising the importance of elections having integrity, of citizens being able to replace a government which was doing an unsatisfactory job – a right which has grown rather tenuous under the auspices of the authoritarian undemocratic European Union.
Why is this criticism of internet freedom relevant to WUWT?
Imagine if Climategate had occurred in the 1990s, or even the 1980s. Would we have ever heard about it? Most Mainstream Media didn’t start to cover Climategate until they had their noses rubbed in it, by rising awareness on non traditional news outlets.
Thanks to the Internet, the power to judge is placed into the hands of the people – even the Communist Chinese with their vast teams of internet censors have trouble controlling the flow of information.
Sure a lot of the information purveyed on the internet is nonsense – but the mainstream media also purveys a lot of nonsense. I have never seen compelling evidence that well paid mainstream media journalists are more careful about vetting the stories they publish than dedicated volunteers.
With unfiltered information from the internet at our fingertips, we have an opportunity to learn what is really happening in the world, beyond the control and social management of politicians like the Obamas and Merkels of the world.
To me, this unprecedented access to raw information is a freedom worth protecting. Because this window of freedom will potentially slam shut in the very near future, as the rise of artificial intelligence makes it increasingly possible to clamp down on the flow of information presented on the internet. For example, the climate fanatics at Google are working very hard on trying to filter search results according to their view of what constitutes the “truth”.
The following is the clip of President Obama and Merkel discussing the challenges posed by the Internet. The full original press conference is available here.
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After I had posted that, I remembered something.
Obama is a hypocritical Cnut.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/?_r=0
If the Internet had been controlled, he would never have been elected.
Hmmm. Maybe there is some merit after all…
All right! Alt-right. Alternative right and meme magick
So “technology is making it more difficult to unite people behind a common purpose” ?
The Donald doesn’t seem to have found it a problem.
You know, they call the Republicans the party of no ideas, but the only idea Democrats ever have is to suppress more freedoms.
..If the want my internet mouse, they can pry it from my cold, dead hands !! LOL
For once he is right. Without the internet we wouldn’t know about the climate change scam.
the new age version of?
Farenheit 451
anything allowing the masses to get educated and informed
needs be banned/destroyed/controlled
bit late but theyre stupid enough to think they can
When the progressives figure out that are too late wrt information distribution, they will quickly become converts to 2nd amendment advocacy, thereby legitimately obtaining weapons so that they can retrench and FORCE compliance to their campus-esque restriction on free speech and implementation of censorship.
It is the natural next step. see here…Progressives want to restrict free speech… in the name of free speech??!!! and kill you in the process. Firemen… to burn truth. Spooky huh?
Bring it, baby. You won’t be happy with the result.
US citizens have the right to decide whether her family can stay here or not. Illegal immigrants don’t get to decide on their own.
Legal immigrants have to wait years and jump through hoops, then experience investigations into their living arrangements. They are the residents who suffer unfairly under Clinton’s beloved, “Y’all come!” open borders.
Usually Obama and Merkel’s idiocies are tolerated by their own supporters, but not even their braindead followers can stomach this crap. Obama has to be the dumbest President evah!
He contradicts himself this time and adds an argument so stupid that one must wonder whether
he can think logically about anything. And I love Merkel’s idiot claim that “we learned how to control books” after that technology appeared. Well, Merkel, apparently you haven’t seen what gets
published over the past half century. How about 1000 JFK assassination conspiracy books that
provide 1000 different theories to explain something that needed no explanation? And I
don’t hear anything about the biased news media that supported Obama for the past 8 years,
hiding all of his many blunders. Hard to believe that these two pinheads are leaders of world powers. Well, what were once world powers. Now they are bent on eliminating free speech. Or rather free speech by their political opponents. Ah, for the bad old days, when a half dozen media outlets could get together and protect their chosen Dems. Competition amongst ideas is what saves a free country. THAT is what these two dimwits are railing about, not the internet.
Typical statist sore loser thugs. Obama promoters bragged about how they used social media to get out their message and voters. Now these same arrogant people blame the media instead of facing not only the unpopularity of their message but its failure. This latest ploy, the corporate censorship of “fake news” by common carriers like Face Book, Twitter and Google is the latest. Imagine American Airlines deciding that certain people can’t fly simply because they disagree with American Airlines politics. Who would tolerate that? And the so-called “fake news”? Let’s start a review of just how many stories the MSM has phonied up on climate alone. How about suppressing stories on the Clinton Foundation? Or the Zimmerman tragedy? Or misleading stories supporting Obamacare? Or ignoring the refugee problems in Europe? And so much more. Google and FB have been directly coordinating with Obama these past years. Now we see what they are coordinating on: protecting their monopolies at the cost of our civil liberties. And the truth the so-called progressives claim to care so much about
I would tolerate American Airlines deciding that they won’t carry passengers who’s politics they disagree with.
The difference is that it’s a private company with many competitors. Just as I have the right to patronize whichever companies I chose, they have the right to pick the customers they will serve.
Now such a policy is stupid, and will cause an extreme customer backlash, but that is their choice. Just like it was Mozilla’s choice to fire a CEO that didn’t support gay marriage.
Face Book, Twitter and Google are not “common carriers”
..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
Notice how the leftist justifies censorship because it is legal.
Fist step: Turn over control of the internet to an international body. Done
Second step: Do not issue domain names without detailed, government approve “plan of use” *Of course there will be a hefty fee involved.
Third step: Set up a bureaucratic system to police the internet with the power to shut down internet site without do cause.
Humans are a creative bunch.
Shut down the internet, people will just go build their own.
That is what some people are already doing in some locations.
https://popularresistance.org/creating-an-alternative-internet-to-keep-the-nsa-out/
I’m glad people are working on this, but as one commenter inferred, it’s not going to be a panacea. Governments effectively control the radio spectrum via the ITU, and you can be damn sure they would deploy measures to make life difficult if they chose to. Anything utilising radio waves is at risk of interception and jamming – these mesh networks largely rely on ubiquitous 2.4 & 5Ghz WiFi frequencies, so we could see a 21st century version of the famous Soviet “Woodpecker” jammers that short wave enthusiasts like me remember well. I believe there are point to point systems using high power Infrared diodes, similar to remote control devices, but they too can be “swamped” if you know where the receiver is. Lazers are a better bet, and I have no doubt that surplus commercial microwave equipment could be put to use if things get really out of hand…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZw4buvizJk Texas Gusher Exposes Lie Of Peak Oil Pushed By Media
Has anyone asked Big Al if he thinks his invention is a bad thing?
I’m sure he would be very upset to hear these comments by his friends.
James Bull
Hey POTUS…..read the First Amendment much??? You know….from that pesky, silly document from 1789..
He’s a great Constitutional scholar, remember?
That’s why he gave away the internet control. The US Constitution says nothing about other countries limiting what we see and know.
The trouble for Obama and Merkel is that the ‘fake’ news stories have less effect than the true ones. Merkel might not like people hearing about attack in Germany from migrants but those accounts are genuine. The harder she tries to silence them, the more likely they are to attract attention and make people angry.
The way people access the internet isn’t as straight forward as either of them is assuming. People form groups of like minded souls and even if all the big names froze out undesireables like sceptics, some company or some country would provide a platform. Sure, people use Facebook and Twitter but they’re not essential. I didn’t find any of the sceptic web sites I look at now through any of the main seach or social networks. I arrived here by idle comments made by other people. ‘Hey, check out this site…’ type of thing. While I now have bookmarks to my favourite sites, when I’m on someone else’s PC I sometimes follow the blog roll on the first site I come to. Or I get to Scottish Sceptic’s uclimate site and use it like a newspaper – what story looks good today? On other issues I engage with, all form the same sorts of node networks. Thus you get history blogs, dieting blogs, wood work blogs, etc. You can’t kill every hub connection off a determined social network.
And even if they started shutting key sites down. We’d work out how to circumvent it, wouldn’t we?
“The trouble for Obama and Merkel is that the ‘fake’ news stories have less effect than the true ones. ”
——————-
Worth repeating, thanks.
Google have already done something like this. I’ve been monitoring climate news for years. At one time WUWT and many other sceptic blogs would get published. But they were not highly rated. Then I suggested to Anthony that he change his key words so that he got higher up – and he did – then a few months later, Google altered the news searches and internet searches to almost remove WUWT from board news and google searches (unless you put in a very specific search which can only be satisfied by an article on WUWT).
That is absolutely appalling, given that WUWT this the mainstream media in term of climate. It is the same as if Google removed from its listings any blogs that favoured republicans – unless the search could not return any other site.
It is quite blatantly an attempt by google to prevent people reading what is on WUWT and to “force” us to read the establishment views in the “mainstream” media and from academics.
The problem for the establishment, is that I seldom use google to find climate articles – nor any politics. They shut the door after the horse bolted.
I’ve noticed the same. Cook’s 97% site comes way too easily on top compared to wuwt. I’m pretty certain this is not so much an accident but a political side taking.
I hardly ever try to google anything else than SS or wiki anyway, because I know it wont find contrarian stuff anyway
However, google works with magic – it is not a simple issue.
Certainly couldn’t be due to relative traffic.
“Obama predicted that the rise of technology needed to be managed”
WTF doesn’t begin to cover my anger on reading that statement.
Inside every liberal is a totalitarian waiting to emerge. Notice how Merkel said “we learned to CONTROL books”, so of course now the internet needs controls. Freedom of thought is such a pesky thorn in the side to our betters.
I don’t get why would you call a totalitarian ‘liberal’?
Merkel is burning books, that is not liberal!
Hugs, “A rose by any other name….”
Those who desire totalitarianism, total control and power, simply desire it and will seek to achieve it under any guise. Usually bureaucracies are a major tool.
Freedom means that sometimes people are free to do and say that with which one might not agree.
The job of Government is make sure you are free to the same as long neither suppresses the other’s freedom.
Tricky job.
The Goreian clowns are going to end up looking like serious idiots… Global Climate Change… *SPIT*
She has it exactly backwards. The printing press had huge effects on society. Outside the Soviet bloc I can’t think of any policies taken by any country to contain, manage, and steer the printing press. What happened was that society adapted to the presence of the press.
My favourite effect of the printing press is anonymous pamphleteering. It allows the wide dissemination of unpopular ideas and protects people against the tyranny of the majority. It is constitutionally protected and important for the proper functioning of democracy.
The internet is anonymous pamphleteering on steroids. Trying to clamp down on the internet is antidemocratic.
Today’s world, though, it’s very difficult to stay anonymous and disseminate your message. Just ask the poor guy facing five years in jail for “pamphleteering” in opposition to the Muslim Nazi meeting at Brown University.
Trust a former East German to assume that it is the role of government to manage and steer society.
More than just “East German” so just to add one of those “ideation theories” maybe her leadership role in overwhelming Europe with a practically non-integrable culture was possibly on purpose:
“One Washington foreign policy expert, who did not wish to be named, this week described Merkel to Breitbart London as “a former member of the East German Communist Party who functioned as a mid-level propaganda commissar for the Free German Youth, that is, the young Communists.”
“She and the then-KGB operative Putin, who is fluent in German, were active in East Germany at the same time. Whether they met or worked together, I don’t know, but they were both in the same line of work.”
In April Cliff Kincaid, a director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, wrote “Merkel was known to be suspiciously pro-Russian when she ran for high office in Germany but that her political party, the Christian Democrats, nominated her anyway.”
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/07/03/how-close-was-young-communist-merkel-to-east-german-regime-americans-want-to-know/
It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that most of the elites in the Christian Democrats share Merkels pro Soviet err Russian sympathies.
No sane person from DDR has ‘pro Soviet sympathies’.
I’m not sure about Putin – is he blackmailing Merkel?
Those who benefit from the system supported it.
I should have mentioned that the only ones who benefit from such a system are those who are running it.
Seems like Obama is encouraging the rioters in the U.S…Maybe he should give back that Peace Prize he received, before he was even the President, for doing absolutely nothing !
Fox News: “Obama to anti-Trump protesters: March on”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/17/obama-to-anti-trump-protesters-march-on.html
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” -Thomas Jefferson
The MSM don’t call it censorship when they suppress alternative views such as the views of climate skeptics, they call it fact checking.
As Obama and Merkel are in favour of complete control of the internet they wouldn’t mind if it was their opponents exercising it.
i recognize your sarc. Their opponents would keep it pretty much as it is. They are admitting is THEY have lost control and want it back.
As I’ve already written extensively on the subject in The Internet Revolution for Numpties I’ll just try to summarise:
The internet has created a way for news and ideas to bypass the old establishment which maintained control of society through control of print, broadcasting, publishing (and in academia: academic journals). Now almost anyone with a PC can start publishing & broadcasting their ideas.
Previously the establishment media, supported the establishment politicians and establishment (or PC=Press Consensus) views. They did so by constantly telling us that their views, were the public. As in “the public think that ….”
Now ordinary people are bypassing the press and establishment and hearing from other ordinary people and finding out that the public don’t have the views that the press portray us as having.
This is threatening to all those politicians, journalists, academics etc. who used to use their control of what we the public heard to force through their very minority views as “the public view”.
It’s been less than 2 months since the US gave away control of the internet. Now, exactly 1 day after Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a speech calling for other nations to join in “greater governance” of the internet, Obama gives essentially the same speech.
Who didn’t see this coming?
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-internet-idUSKBN13B1FF
Every few months my children tell me “you should be using … ” another digital network which is not part of the internet. Anyone who tries to regulate the internet is doomed to complete utter failure. I can’t find a fraction of what I’ve written – and I know where to look – there’s not a hope of government finding it.
Unfortunately, China IS successfully regulating the Internet.
This is both worrying and funny. I remember from my undergraduate days a study of political power which identified the third dimension of power as control over the agenda. This, not technology, is what Obama’s really on about; the existence of social media gives voice to those who previously didn’t have one, and who were never heard before by politicians. I’m also interested to learn the distinction politicians would draw between populism and democracy; presumably it’s populism if they don’t like the answer.
Bingo! “It’s wonderful democracy if Obama and pals win, it’s evil populism if they don’t win. And the soon to be former President gave away control of the most open means vof communications ever devised to a bunch of anti-freedom thugs. That alone should place Obama near the top of the list of worst President ever.
“Control over the agenda” is exactly what the CO2 scare is based on. Whole generations are being brought up thinking that CO2 is the only game in town.
This was reinforced when, on a TV science program, the presenting scientist asked a schoolgirl what the most prevalent gas in the atmosphere was. She answered, CO2. He corrected that and then asked for the second most prevalent gas, and she tried CO2 again …
The problem with most populists is that they want to use government to take rights away from anyone who doesn’t agree with the populist.
Populism is indistinguishable from socialism in it’s methods. It’s goals are slightly different, but that’s it.
It would be good to start with a definition of populism that distinguishes it from democracy. You have pointed out a characteristic that you believe to be populist, but the same could be said of any democratic system with an embedded majority (such as the misguided attempts to establish ‘new’ democracies in the Middle East and parts of Africa.)
I think the sense in which the word ‘populist’ has been bandied about recently is more about it not being the will of the ‘elite.’
All I can do is look at what most people who call themselves “populist” say they want to do once they are the ones in charge.
As the old saying goes. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
There is nothing magical about naked democracy. Without some mechanism to protect the rights of the minority democracy is as tyrannical as any dictator.
Merkel is exactly correct that the printing press caused change: the Reformation to be exact, a response to church corruption.
She says:
“It took a while until societies learned how to find the right kind of policies to contain this and to manage and steer this,” she said.
What exactly is the “manage and steer” she speaks of? Official censorship. In the end it failed but there was lots of censorship of the press and even arrests for heresy and treason over the past 500 years in Europe (and elsewhere). All this concern about “fake news” and disruption is only because they both lost. Obama was fine with fake news and astroturfing during his campaigns.
Speaking of the printing press, and the Reformation in response to church corruption, Martin Luther became the first “media celebrity” His picture was on all the pamphlets attacking church practices, so all readers in Europe had a pretty good idea of his arguments and what he looked like.