Blogs in Belarus Boost Human Rights

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SURF GLOBALLY
Most importantly, by closely studying cases like Denis Denisov's, bloggers and activists in developed countries can suddenly take note of how much innovation is happening elsewhere today that is powered by the Internet - but, paradoxically, is unseen by most of its users.

Those of us who pay minimal attention to web developments outside of our national web communities tend to forget that a lot of the so-called Web 2.0 is driven not so much by promising business opportunities as it is by basic human needs and aspirations, be they freedom, democracy, or merely the need for socializing.

While many of us lose track of the most exciting developments in our blind devotion to the worlds of MySpace, Second Life, or the newest toy in town, Twitter (or some combination of all three), the tiny activist minority is constantly proving that the Internet can be a tremendous force for good - and not just for dating, flirting, or cyberbullying.

Yet most of these activities - which constitute the Internet's other side - remain unseen. Take "Vote Different," the most talked-about video of the past two months, which remixed a talk by Hillary Clinton with the chilly footage of Apple's 1984 commercial launching the Macintosh computer.

How many of us knew that the Tunisian democracy activists remixed the very same video - of course, in the Tunisian context - to encourage their fellow citizens to boycott a presidential election back in 2004, three full years before the infamous Hillary video?

Many such innovations from the developing world still pass unnoticed, as the predominantly Anglophone global blogosphere keeps suffering from its own unique type of attention deficit disorder, which gleefully puts posts about American Idol's Sanjaya or Paris Hilton next to pleas for a bloggers' code of conduct or for detailed analysis of the situation in Iraq.

However, we should not worry too much: The web already contains most of the remedies for its worst diseases, and it's not going to be long until the online activists tackle the "online" part in their name too, making their efforts useful for those of us outside the blogosphere.

In the meantime, let's hope that the Belarusians will soon need to find a way to return all the contributions they received when Denis is formally acquitted. After all, despite the excitement about the Internet, the final word is still with a real-world judge.

Provided by Transitions Online—Intelligent Eastern Europe