• Evgeny Morozov
• Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA)

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06 October 2009Have we overestimated the internet's ability to bring change and underestimated the role that political, social and cultural forces play in determining how new technologies are being adopted.

In the context of authoritarian states the internet has always been viewed as an unambiguous force for good. It has, indeed, had a wide-reaching impact on many such regimes, allowing their citizens to mobilise around particular political and social issues and gain access to previously banned materials.

However, many authoritarian governments are now also beginning to exploit cyberspace for their own purposes; some of them appear to be succeeding in subverting the internet's democratising potential. We may have overestimated the internet's ability to bring change and underestimated the role that political, social and cultural forces play in determining how new technologies are being adopted.

Could the internet actually inhibit rather than empower civil society? Join Evgeny Morozov as he outlines the dramatically different ways in which the internet's potential can be utilised by citizens and regimes.

Evgeny Morozov is a 2009-2010 Yahoo fellow at Georgetown University. He has written about technology and politics for The Economist, Newsweek, The International Herald Tribune, Slate, The Boston Globe and other publications. He also writes a blog for the Foreign Policy Magazine.

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