SMS als demokratische Technologie

Einen interessanten Beitrag über SMS und Mobiltelefone als Technologie für mehr Demokratie hat “The christian science monitor” veröffentlicht: New political tool: text messaging.

If television helped bring down the Berlin Wall and the fax machine helped protesters organize during the Tiananmen Square protests, cellphone text messaging, also known as SMS (short message services), may be the new political tool for activists. In tech-savvy nations like South Korea, but more so in controlled societies like China and the Middle East, text messaging has been fomenting what some experts call a “mobile democracy.” Because it is unmonitored and cheap, it provides an underground channel for succinct uncensored speech. Demonstrators use it to mobilize protests, dodge authorities, and fire off political spam. It has also enabled them to engineer collective action at unprecedented speed.