A trend of oppressive governments is to blind it’s people from the truth and prevent them from gathering. That was an easy task for the administration in the past; all they had to do was control print media and throw soldiers at it. With the creation of the Internet, this issue became a new monster entirely.
The Internet started simply and quietly. Stanford and UCLA had built a link between them that would allow data to be transfer from one to the other in 1969. Digital connections between the two proved successful and grew larger to the point where many universities had such connections. This growth made the invention of email practical in 1971.
With email the Internet started its first steps toward mass communication among people not based upon location. The next major step didn’t happen until twenty years later with the first webpage in 1991. Average people could gain mass knowledge from their computer. Fast forward to the near past, 2004, The Facebook, later known just as Facebook, was released to college students. Facebook allowed everyone to be free and openly communicate on a scale like never before.
The current amount of open-communication has been scaring un-favored leaders for years because it is a major threat to their authority and control of the people. The power of the Internet can be easily seen in the recent Egypt and Libyan rebellions. The people gathered and rallied against their government. This is something that China has been worried about for years. That’s why they have large blocks and control over what sections of the Internet you are allowed to access while inside of China. For example, Facebook is not allowed at all. Even when China’s Internet surfers Google something the results are filtered by Chinese government. A huge chunk of the Internet is unavailable to China.
Iran’s situation will be much worse than China’s. With China, there is limited access to the world, but Iran they will be completely cutting off the rest of the world. This will limit the sites down to only the sites hosted in Iran (and under their control). They plan to create the very first nationwide intranet. An intranet is when you connect a group of computers together, but do not connect that group to other networks (a.k.a. the Internet). There will be no physical wires connecting them to the outside world making it impossible for even professionals to bypass this block. They are essentially trapped in a bubble when it comes to communication.
In the United States, we are lucky enough to have very open communications with the world around us. We had a scare with SOPA attempting to block us in the same way, but we rallied together and stopped Congress from passing it. So next time you login to Twitter or Facebook, remember how lucky you are to have the ability and right.
[Source: cnet.com, sixrevisions.com] By John Gillis