The virtual world is a 'public square' much more vast than Tiananmen Square. And you can't send in the tanks to crush the netizens.
Interpretation
The virtual world is an expansive platform for public discourse that cannot be easily controlled or suppressed.
Jared Cohen's quote highlights the difference between physical control over a space, like Tiananmen Square, and the challenges of governing the vast and dynamic nature of the internet. In the digital age, the internet serves as a public square for free expression, where attempts to suppress voices are met with resistance, making it difficult for authorities to impose control as they might in real-life protests.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about internet censorship policies.
Technology is a tool, and it's a platform. Nobody gets arrested for being a blogger; people get arrested for dissent. Nobody gets arrested for putting information about themselves online; they get arrested for being an activist. I'm a strong believer in the fact that you should not blame the tools; you should blame the circumstances.
Name any issue in the world, I can tell you how technology is intertwined with it. I can tell you how technology will make it better. How it can make it worse. It needs to be part of everything that we do, whether you are a government or a company or a citizen.
It will soon be possible to transmit wireless messages around the world so simply that any individual can carry and operate his own apparatus.
Thanks to modern technology, we now can deliver every text in every research library to every citizen in our country, and to everyone in the world. If we fail to do so, we are not living up to our civic duty.
Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe.
Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability - you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way.
The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.
Strangely enough, the linking of computers has taken place democratically, even anarchically. Its rules and habits are emerging in the open light, rather shall behind the closed doors of security agencies or corporate operations centers.
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