[liberationtech] Peter Theil On Arab spring

[Jillian C. York]

My two cents:

I think it's most certainly too simplistic.  Not only does it ignore the
5-10 year buildup of various online communities (as opposed to this idea
that one Facebook page suddenly created activists), but of course also
ignores the various offline factors which include food prices but also
plenty more (labor protests dating back to 2008, the increasing awareness
of police brutality, etc).

I'd point to a source, but I honestly haven't yet seen a *single* source
that covers everything.  Some folks have done great work analyzing the
online climate, others the offline, but—at least of what I've read thus
far, which isn't everything—I haven't seen anyone pull it all together.

-Jillian

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 10:02 PM, Prashant Singh <pacificleo at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> Hi Guys
>
> Recently  at  Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen, CO,  there was a
> debate between Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel  about Contribution
> of Technology in Our Society . They touched upon many topic but  at one
> point of time during the debate  while discussing role of technology in
> enabling Arab Spiring and other revolution  Thiel said
>
> "*When you talk about the Arab spring, you can say that it's evidence of
>> Google and Twitter ‑‑ ‑‑ liberating the world through information.  But,
>> the actual facts on the ground are that food prices rose by 30 to 50
>> percent in the previous year and you basically had people who had become ‑‑
>> you had desperate people who had become more hungry than scared, who
>> revolted.*"
>
>
> is he being too simplistic ? was there more to the revolution than just
> Food Price ? Would like to know your thoughts . you can see the whole debat
> online at http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/17/transcript-schmidt-thiel/
>
> thanks
>
> --
> Prashant
>
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-- 
*+1-857-891-4244 |** jilliancyork.com | @jilliancyork *

"We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the
seemingly impossible to become a reality" - *Vaclav Havel*
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