It’s all about the shoes.

Here’s another feather in entrepreneurship’s cap.

I stumbled upon TOMS Shoes through a recent BusinessWeek Special Report on Social Entrepreneurs in the US. Perfect caricature of the curious consumer, I clicked around – and quite suddenly, the Tufts undergrad, student of our Digital Democracy course in me became engaged. TOMS shoes is the most thorough intersection of entrepreneurship, social activism, technology and social media I’ve yet seen!

TOMS shoes was founded by Blake Mycoskie, on the premise of giving one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes that is purchased – a movement the company terms “One-for-One”. Yes, a movement – that’s what the company explicitly calls it. The shoes themselves are simple, inspired by the aesthetic of a type of traditional Argentine footwear, leaving much creative space for wearers to customize their own pairs. For less creative/inclined to personalization types, there’s a broad selection of colors and patterns to choose from. Most shoes are priced just under $50 – not bad at all, for two pairs of shoes. To date, TOMS Shoes has given 140,000 pairs of shoes to children in need.

Technology kicks in here:

• Mycoskie, whose title is Chief Shoe Giver, maintains a blog, and a twitter account, with details on TOMS’ shoe drops, both locally and abroad. (Previous locations include Argentina and New Orleans.)
• TOMS Shoes has a partner non-profit, Friends of TOMS, whose site acts an avenue for volunteers to sign up for shoe drops and get mobilized to serve their own communities.
• TOMS Shoes actively uses and organizes on twitter and facebook.
• TOMS Shoes and its founder just became the first business featured in an AT & T advertisement (video above), because Mycoskie has been a customer of the phone network since 1997 and relies on it to conduct his business internationally. Originally 30-seconds long, the spot was so popular that AT & T expanded it to a minute-long spot. (There’s a great “the making of” video for the ad as well, that explains the approach of AT & T and Mycoskie to the advertisement.)

TOMS Shoes sells shoes, gives shoes, organizes consumers and volunteers – all through the comprehensive use of social media, mobile technology and the internet. I’m impressed!

-Hui Lim

Online social media networks + swine flu = mass panic and disaster?

Twitter allows information to be passed around quickly, whether that information is right or wrong, and currently, #swineflu is the belle of the ball. I recently came across an article that discussed how people were panicking about the swine flu pandemic on Twitter. It seems to have “infected” the social network itself. The article states that the quick transmission and retransmission of information across the Twitterverse can cause an unnecessary panic.

But my question is, does it really make everything worse? Are people panicking more or less than they would without these websites? There would still be television or radio or newspaper if there were no internet, so people would still hear of the pandemic and talk about it frequently. In the past, word of mouth was an effective way of hearing about many things, and it seems like Twitter is just taking these conversations that would have taken place anyways and putting them out on the public sphere, which allows people to see how much and how often people are actually discussing the issue.

But is the article overreacting? Should we be panicking? One child has died in the United States, about 60 people have died in Mexico, and there are confirmed cases in many countries, and even more suspected cases. However, another article I read said that last winter, 36,000 Americans died of the regular flu, and yet another article I read claims that this outbreak of swine flu will not be as deadly as a normal flu outbreak. Many of the people who have been infected have been treated and have recovered without complications. There is always the threat of mutation and spreading to third world countries, but a web 2.0 induced panic will not do anything to stop the spread and/or possible mutation.

Every time the virus spreads somewhere new, people are tweeting and blogging all about it. I actually saw that @huilim tweeted earlier today that several students at Amherst College have tested positive. A White House aide has also tested positive. This information has all spread quickly due to the internet. There was even one tweet that the first article mentioned, it read “In the pandemic Spanish Flu of 1918-19, my Grandfather said bodies were piled like wood in our local town….SWINE FLU = DANGER”.

I have come across all of the aforementioned articles on ontd_political, an offshoot of the hugely popular “Oh No They Didn’t” livejournal community. One great thing about livejournal is that it’s such a great platform for discussion, and swine flu has been a popular topic in the past couple days. To me, it seems like most if the members are staying pretty level-headed about the virus, which is a good sign. On livejournal, it was a huge fad to photoshop Aretha Franklin’s memorable hat from the Obama inauguration on one’s icon, and the new trend seems to be putting masks on one’s icon. I think that people aren’t TOO concerned, because they’re lightheartedly joking with the icons.

-Sylvia

Digidem and Blogging | A Redux

Alas, tonight is our last class. To prepare, I was sifting through the fantastic set of student blog posts from throughout the semester. The diversity of topics, opinion and writing style reminded me of Andrew Sullivan’s piece from November 2008 in The Atlantic. Andrew writes:

…as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral and sometimes brutal.

I think assigning blogging in college (or high school) classes helps students develop their voice, not just within the bounds of formal writing, but by encouraging the exploration of the relationship between themselves and the content in question.

The following posts [just a few of the many great posts] are exemplary of the breadth of content we discussed in the class, but perhaps more importantly, they embody the wide range of voices we all take on when blogging.

Matt writes on Nerding Out on Undersea Cables:

The fact that a huge part of Africa relies on satellite to connect to the internet completely blew my mind, and when I found that even our connection to the internet here in Boston tenuously relies on the well-being of a few bottleneck points I decided to do some more research into the history of the backbone of the World Wide Web.

Sam reflects on the role of the Internet in the larger activism narrative:

“Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine; I’m on the pavement thinking about the government.” Bob Dylan said that in 1965. The midpoint of an era that shook, like a withdrawn junkie, with political unrest. And to put it lightly, ain’t shit changed — just the names, faces and places….oh yeah, and now we have this thing called the internet. Once upon a time, the markings of a true activist were physical action and the robust will to stand in harm’s way; bottles broken in streets, sit-ins, Molotov cocktails and marches. Today the political landscape has changed. Concurrently, the weapons we use to fight injustice on this terrain have evolved. After all, who wants to sit in a Humvee with paper thin siding when the freedom fighters* come?

Aaron critiques the DigiActive Introduction to Facebook Activism:

A DigiActive Introduction to Facebook Activism” gives a concise overview of how to best use Facebook to achieve a successful campaign. While I believe the advice given in the guide is fairly helpful, I believe it grossly overestimates the power of digital tools for grassroots movements looking to achieve substantial reform. There are three criticisms of the guide that I have which concern accountability, sustainability, and results.

Hui discusses jailed bloggers:

jailed bloggers = violation of human rights = repressive government = INJUSTICE

The above is a primitive expression of the thought process most individuals seem to take on when the subject of jailed bloggers is broached. Yet, for me, the subject of jailed bloggers immediately brought to mind the two Singaporean bloggers who were jailed for their offensive racist remarks. Here, another formula is proposed:

jailed bloggers = due punishment for action harmful to other persons/society = enforcement of law + maintenance of civil society = JUSTICE

Why this difference? Are they mutually exclusive?

“Internet Cesspools”, Rise of Executive Power: Reactions

I spent the weekend in the University of Chicago Law School where I took note of some of views with regard to internet regulation circulating amongst the legal scholars.  I’ll begin this post by parsing some of the opinions of these legal scholars and wrap up by discussing the interaction between the legal movement for regulation and current cybersecurity concerns. 

Brian Leiter and Saul Levmore, faculty of U. of Chicago Law School, have been the most vocal of the faculty and have both published views to the effect that the internet anonymity should not be the status quo (or that internet anonymity should be disallowed for certain sites) because of the negative effects produced by such widespread anonymity (flame wars, hate speech, libel).  While, like others in this class, I am largely  in favor of anonymity on the internet because it allows unpopular opinions to be expressed without the danger of political reprisals or social disapprobation, I don’t think that their opinions should be immediately dismissed.  

What Leiter and Levmore both argue for is a limited cessation of internet anonymity in places they call “internet cesspools.”  The context is this: in the past year, two Yale Law students were the objects of sexual harassment speech, libel, and sexual threats on a popular law school admissions site, and the perpetrators of the hate speech could not be punished because it was difficult to identify the people who had posted the threats.   Their argument, loosely, is this: if people aren’t allowed to slander people in public, than why should people be allowed to publish slander online?

If the internet had some control from the center, Leiter and Levmore argue, there would be an easier way to track down cyber criminals or perpetrators of hate speech.  Levmore’s position is that internet anonymity should be regulated so that the “bad” sites where hate speech and libel is being published should be regulated more closely. (Leiter, I think, agrees, but his position is still a bit fuzzy to me.)

In theory, this sounds fine by me–regulate the “bad” sites, but keep the rest of the sites running with full anonymity–but the problem is threefold: first, who should decide which sites are “good” or “bad”; second, with what metrics do we determine the “goodness” or “badness” of the sites; and third, assuming that we’ve given some central authority the powers to make these determinations, how do we ensure that this authority does not abuse its privilege (e.g., by targetting certain sites as “bad” or selling the personally identifiable information (PII) of its internet users to third parties)?

The third problem, I think, has somewhat of a conceivable solution.  Given America’s “exceptionalist” suspicion of government oversight and of placing power into the hands of any one monolithic entity, I think the only approach toward selectively managing anonymity of the internet and handling the PII of internet users would be to create a public-private conglomerate (of say, 20 organizations comprised of corporations, human rights organizations, and government groups) that would have “shares” of users’ information.  And along those lines, only if, say, 14 of the organizations put together their shares could the PII of an anonymous internet user be divulged under a court subpoena.  The fractioning of power in this regulatory system would work like the separation of powers model that the Founding Fathers of the United States constructed for our political system to protect the interests of the populace by pitting the separate interests of different bureaucracies against each other.

And I think what we’d have left, under a model of regulation like this one would still be a great deal of internet anonymity to protect the freedom of political dissent, privacy, and other civil liberties.

That still leaves us with the first two problems to wrestle with, however.  As the CSIS Report details, the President (or the Executive Branch, at large) does not have the clear constitutional authority to manage the internet.  While I think it’s good that the President can use his office to swoop in and take care of crises that require immediate action (and take care of this sooner than Congress could convene), I think that the increase in Presidential power over the past several decades is a troubling trend that offsets the distribution of power that was meant to be shared equally between the three branches of government.  Cybersecurity is one of the latest issues that the Executive Branch has claimed jurisdiction over (see Cybersecurity Act of 2009) and claiming jurisdiction in this arena gives the Executive more unchecked power than I think is healthy for our democracy.

As the intersection between technology and security become increasingly difficult to wrestle with, I am concerned that instead of finding a best solution, we are opting for the quickest solution, a solution that may have devastating unintended consequences for America’s political future.

–Laura Fong

Modern-Day Neuromancer: The Cyber-Warfare Revolution

The world is moving ever closer to science fiction. When our parents were children, no one would ever have assumed that their entire record collections and much more would be able to fit inside a device the size of a wallet.  When we were children no one could have imagined the impact social networking and web 2.0 would have on American culture.  Not ten years ago, very few people could have imagined that a strike on a nation’s Internet connection could cripple it.  Nonetheless, these are exactly the developments that took place. 

 

The Estonian example of Cyber-attack is probably the best example of the dangers of cyber-crime.  In a country whose government operates primarily through networking services, the crippling of their Prime Minister’s, Foreign Affairs and Justice Ministers’ websites for a period of time, effectively removing the government’s primary ability to interact with its people.  Had this censure of communication occurred by traditional means on a less technocratic society, this would have been a declaration of war.  The DDOS attacks were coordinated by Russian hackers and carried out by more than 100,000 “Zombie” PCs, which must count for some sort of criminal charge.

 

The recent Russian attack on the Georgian communications networks is another key example of the effectiveness of cyber-warfare.  The attack on the Georgian communications networks was conducted in tandem with a physical military operation, intended to destabilize the nation for the duration of the attack.  Using DDOS and SQL based viruses, the Russian hackers shut down the Georgian government websites and media outlets, effectively blinding and silencing the nation’s Internet presence.

 

Espionage has not been left out of the new cyber-warfare trend, the People’s Republic of China have been honing their cyber-espionage skills for years.  In fact, the Peoples Liberation Army have incorporated hackers into their ranks for the purpose of digital espionage.  If this is to be the future of intelligence, then countries need to find more secure ways of exchanging information, or lessen their dependence on digital communications a thought that is not attractive to many of the rising technocracies in the world.

 

Patrick Farley

Nerding Out With Undersea Cables

During our last class, we briefly looked into the SEACOM undersea cable that will finally bring wired internet access to all of eastern Africa. The fact that a huge part of Africa relies on satellite to connect to the internet completely blew my mind, and when I found that even our connection to the internet here in Boston tenuously relies on the well-being of a few bottleneck points I decided to do some more research into the history of the backbone of the World Wide Web.

I spoke to my dad, a professional nerd, about the topic, and he pointed me to one of Wired Magazine’s most famous articles . Admittedly, the article is a bit dated (December 1996), and if you want a nice overview of the infrastructure that supports the internet, this is definitely not it. But if you want to get a fantastic perspective on the business of connecting people to the internet and the history of creating the infrastructure necessary for a global telecommunications network (and have an hour or two to kill), this article is a must-read.

As not everyone has the time to read the article, I’ve pulled out several quotations I thought were particularly interesting. Some are facts, some are general issues that have come up in class, and all definitely inform discussion about the subject. The quotations are listed in the order they appear in the article.

– “There is also the obvious threat of sabotage by a hostile government, but, surprisingly, this almost never happens. When cypherpunk Doug Barnes was researching his Caribbean project, he spent some time looking into this, because it was exactly the kind of threat he was worried about in the case of a data haven. Somewhat to his own surprise and relief, he concluded that it simply wasn’t going to happen. ‘Cutting a submarine cable,’ Barnes says, ‘is like starting a nuclear war. It’s easy to do, the results are devastating, and as soon as one country does it, all of the others will retaliate.'”

– “As little slack as possible is employed, partly because cable costs a lot of money (for the FLAG cable [A cable running from London to Egypt to Thailand to Tokyo constructed in the late 1990’s], $16,000 to $28,000 per kilometer, depending on the amount of armoring) and partly because loose coils are just asking for trouble from trawlers and other hazards. In fact, there is so little slack (in the layperson’s sense of the word) in a well-laid cable that it cannot be grappled and hauled to the surface without snapping it.”

– [The following answers a question that seems to come up a lot: “Where do fiber-optic cables come from?”] “The question naturally arises: How does one go about manufacturing a hollow glass tube thinner than a hair? More to the point, how did they do it 100 years ago? After all, as Worrall pointed out, they needed to be able to repair these machines when they were posted out on Ascension Island. The answer is straightforward and technically sweet: you take a much thicker glass tube, heat it over a Bunsen burner until it glows and softens, and then pull sharply on both ends. It forms a long, thin tendril, like a string of melted cheese stretching away from a piece of pizza. Amazingly, it does not close up into a solid glass fiber, but remains a tube no matter how thin it gets.
Exactly the same trick is used to create the glass fibers that run down the center of FLAG and other modern submarine cables: an ingot of very pure glass is heated until it glows, and then it is stretched. The only difference is that these are solid fibers rather than tubes, and, of course, it’s all done using machines that assure a consistent result.”

– “As I started to realize, and as John Worrall and many other cable-industry professionals subsequently told me, there have been new technologies but no new ideas since the turn of the century. Alas for Internet chauvinists who sneer at older, “analog” technology, this rule applies to the transmission of digital bits down wires, across long distances. We’ve been doing it ever since Morse sent “What hath God wrought!” from Washington to Baltimore.”

– [This is potentially one contributing factor to why it has taken so long to run a cable to eastern Africa.] “… The survey team is keeping an eye on the results, watching for any formations through which cable cannot be run. These are found more frequently in the Indian than in the Atlantic Ocean, mostly because the Atlantic has been charted more thoroughly.”

– “This is a big problem for a few different reasons. One is that cables take a few years to build, and, once built, last for a quarter of a century. It’s not a nimble industry in that way. A PTT thinking about investing in a club cable is making a 25-year commitment to a piece of equipment that will almost certainly be obsolete long before it reaches the end of its working life. Not only are they risking lots of money, but they are putting it into an exceptionally long-term investment. Long-term investments are great if you have reliable long-term forecasts, but when your entire forecasting system gets blown out of the water by something like the Internet, the situation gets awfully complicated.”

– “The art of laying a submarine cable is the art of using all the special features of such a ship: the linear engines, the maneuvering thrusters, and the differential GPS equipment, to put the cable exactly where it is supposed to go. Though the survey team has examined a corridor many thousands of meters wide, the target corridor for the cable lay is 200 meters wide, and the masters of these ships take pride in not straying more than 10 meters from the charted route. This must be accomplished through the judicious manipulation of only a few variables: the ship’s position and speed (which are controlled by the engines, thrusters, and rudder) andthe cable’s tension and rate of payout (which are controlled by the cable engine).”

 

– Matt Nix

Africa’s Cell Boom: Overcoming Government Corruption Through SMS

The face of Africa has been changed overnight. The recent boom in cell phone use across all nations and regions of Africa in the past ten years has at least partially revitalized its people, allowing them methods of circumventing the oppressive corruption of their native governments. One of the biggest obstacles preventing Africa from reaping the benefits from its rich natural resources and native industry is the phenomenally corrupt governmental system. The government not only warps the political system to fill their own pockets, but they also monitor communications networks for objectionable content and censor it.

Recently, with the phenomenal boom in cell phone use and their permeation throughout all regions of the continent, Africa has entered a communications renaissance of sorts. There are scores of services that have been developed by African companies and programmers that enable a much greater degree of personal autonomy than ever before. With the ability to report information, receive agricultural information, market management, and a censorship free SMS substitute all available from regular mobile phones it is easy to see why the mobile phone is “the default device in Africa.”

The benefits of Africa’s current freeware-lite model of cell technology sharing has afforded many Africans the ability to reap the benefits of the Web 2.0 era communications revolution in a continent where steady unfiltered Internet access is at a premium. The African people have wholly embraced this new technology and are working to spread its influence to as many parts of the continent as possible. There have been freeware updates to support Amharic characters for support in Ethiopia, and even an Amharic specific SMS client.

It is crucial that the new African technocracy fully utilize their advantage in communications before the presiding governments truly grasp their potential. As George Ayittey said in his speech on the future of Africa the Hippos will not change, they like the status quo the way it is, with them rich and powerful of the work of their subjects. The Hippos have enacted some basic digital communications monitoring, but the current generation of African tech elite have plenty of ways around it. This is the time for the Cheetahs to strike against the Hippos.

Patrick Farley

Volition and Entrepreneurship: Necessary?

The presentation by George Ayittey assigned for our next session on Digital Technology in the Developing World was a robust clarion call to the emerging generation of democratically-minded Africans – whom he termed the “Cheetah Generation” – to wrest Africa from the “Hippo Generation” of corrupt ruling elites. Yet, in envisioning the way forward for Africa, he harks back to the region’s rich history of democratic tribal organization and engagement in market activity prior to colonization. His conception of Africa’s path forward being rooted in the ancient values and practices of the region implicitly provides a compelling explanation for the success of digital technology in Africa thus far.

Applying Ayetti’s analysis, the burgeoning of digital technology in Africa is first due to its peoples’ long-standing recognition and employment of volition to keep their leadership in check and pursue their welfare. According to Ayetti, in pre-colonial times, an overwhelming majority of Africa’s tribes were typically characterized by an essentially democratic framework, wherein the decision-making authority of chiefs were mediated by advisory counsels of elders. Where leaders acted against the interests of their tribe members, people “voted with their feet”, abandoning these leaders to settle elsewhere. Ayetti seems to suggest that these practices indicate that the African peoples’ deeply understood and valued volition, and hence were discrete in their use of it to confer or retract legitimacy from governing parties. Extrapolated to the adoption of digital technologies, this understanding and discrete use of volition seems to elucidate the eager uptake of digital technologies by African populations, as means via which they pursue their welfare and freedom even in the midst of un-supportive political environments.

Ayetti also raises Africa’s tradition of entrepreneurship as a second necessary socio-cultural basis for Africa’s future progress. He puts forward that Africans were already actively engaged in marketplace interactions prior to colonization, decrying the myth of capitalization and market activity as a colonial imposition. With this understanding, the people and businesses of Africa can be seen to possess not only the ability for entrepreneurship, but extensive experience in it, which provided them with the capacity for the technological innovation they have demonstrated in the adoption of digital technology.

In so accounting for the success of digital technology in Africa, more questions are raised about the necessary conditions for the success of digital technology broadly and elsewhere: Are the principles of volition and entrepreneurship fundamental to the successful uptake of digital technologies? Must the local socio-cultural context possess a similar aptitude for exercising free will and innovation to do so? Or is the mother of invention simply necessity?

-Hui Lim

A Force More Powerful – Part I: The Game & Gameplay

A Force More Powerful (AFMP) is a non-violent strategy game that is focused on using non-violent tactics to accomplish a social goal, which can range from freeing an unjustly jailed social figure, to overthrowing a corrupt dictator.

Having played several strategy computer games in the past, I decided to jump right into AFMP. Gameplay takes place in one of several scenarios that range from overthrowing a dictator to convincing a local government to investigate the level of corruption in your city. I decided to go with the scenario, “bringing down a dictator”, which is named after the goal you try to accomplish; bringing down your nation’s corrupt dictator. Although there was a lengthy text-based introduction, and more than several pieces of background information (which unbeknownst to me was incredibly vital to any possible success), I decided to go straight into the game.

The actual gameplay consists of picking members of your organization, choosing a type of tactic for them to do, and choosing a target for their tactic. For example, you can tell someone to fundraise for your group through the local University Student Association, or tell your group leader to organize a vigil outside your city’s police station. However, it often takes money and a certain number of people (the game’s resources) to accomplish each task. Your movement’s money is generated by organizations that are a part of your coalition, along with successful fundraisers done by members of your coalition. The number of people available to your movement represents how many organizations have joined your cause (the game refers to your coalition as an alliance). To increase the number of people available to use for tactics, you must use strategies to shift unaligned or opposition organizations to your alliance. Ultimately, by bringing many organizations and individuals to your alliance you are able to carry out powerful tactics that weaken the support structure of the regime, and help you accomplish your goal.

My first stab at bringing down the dictator did not result well. Within three gameplay months, my leader and three quarters of my members were arrested, while my alliance only had the support of two local organizations. While I tried to use my jailed characters’ public images through both publicized hunger strikes and vigils that took place at the prison, the government would not release my members. Seeing that I was well on my way to failure, I decided to restart the campaign.

My second try was a bit more fruitful. I began to use more low-profile tactics (tactics that do not alert the current regime) to recruit new members and organizations. However, somehow my members were all once again arrested, and by the end of the first year I was left with only two members in my organization.

At this point, I decided it was time to read the manual and pay closer attention to scenario details. This left me with a stronger appreciation of the level of detail that is found in this game. Outside of tactics, every person and organization in the AFMP game-world has a list of policy preferences that deal with taxes, immigration, corruption, due process, freedom of speech, etc. One of the hardest parts of AFMP is trying to increase the membership of your alliance while satisfying everyone’s ideology. In fact, I had ignored this the first two times playing this game, which in turn led to a high propensity of having infiltrators in my group that then led to most of my members were arrested.

While there are many more features of AFMP, I am still attempting to get a firm enough grasp on these details to write about them. However, I am 7 months into a new campaign with only two individuals in jail (a clear victory for me). Hopefully after playing through and succeeding in a scenario or two I can continue to reflect on my experience with this teaching-tool/video game. Next week, I hope to continue write about features of the game and also discuss the benefits and limits of using AFMP as a way to train activists.

– Aaron

Soft Power

SOFT POWER

Soft power is defined by international relations scholar Joseph Nye as being, “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.” It is a means of governments and diplomats of interacting with countries and groups of people to achieve an end.
The movie “Bringing Down a Dictator” brings the debate of soft power to the forefront on the international stage. The movement developed by OTPOR which helped bring down the former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic was an incredible feat. Inspiring a crowd in order to achieve a goal is very plausible. Charismatic leaders and the demonstration of a tangible benefit in order to rouse the attention and passion of the masses, have created movements in the past. When watching that video, I thoguht back to, on a more popular culture level,“The Wave” showed how there is vast potential especially for youth to generate excitement and to create a dedicated group of individuals to work for a common cause. As was seen in that movie, creating a “cult” like atmosphere has the potential for creating erroneaus ends in which those not involved turn vindictive and destructive—discriminating and alientating individuals. Therefore, the goal has to be able to effectively use the attention that was harnessed. That is where the use of soft power comes in. With new technology, there are modern ways of utilizing the potential energy.
The United States had seen the failures of bombing in Serbia. Yes, the military tactics were effective in destroying the assets that they set their sights on; but they were not able to remove the creulty from the seat of power. With the absolutist authority evident in Serbia, the old saying comes to fruition: “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Thus, western ideas of removing that type of power and installing a democratic regime made sense. Yet the problem was that the movement had to come from the bottom up. Because the power in office had corrupted society into agreeing to what had always existed. There had to be a change in the culture. This is where soft power comes to play. As is seen with the movie, the US used assets to support the grassroots movement with experts and resources. This type of movement helped buttress the work being done by the students on the ground. It created a network of action that would ensure that the movement would not falter and fall into violent ends. That type of faltering would make the movement illegitimate, because not only would they lose the high ground but they would also lose the buy in from the millions around the country that had started to view the movement as an alternative movement that would better their future.
This notion of utilizing soft power is especially important in situations where using military force is just too complicated to become effective. In an insightful and intriguing demonstration, the ‘Counterinsurgency Seminar’ at Tufts University showed that with the modern availability of arms and technology—it is exceedingly difficult to orchestrate a campaign that will take into consideration all of the aims of the invader, the people being rescued, and the international community. Therefore the encouraging advocacy of “Smart Power” from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a testament to the fact that the future of diplomacy lies in utilizing more resources from internet advocacy, to digital activism, to cultural dialogue. This was one of the most important take-aways that I had from the “Bringing Down a Dictator” and the efficacy of the US using more than just boots on the ground or bombs in the air as a diplomatic approach to ending a cruel dictator.

–Mike Mandell