The New Republic

So it is not true that, in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood speaks for society as a whole. Nor does Islamist ideology, with its invocations of superstition and its exaltations of obedience, express the Egyptian “street.” Nor does the Brotherhood possess the canny ability to bend history to its will. The crisis in Egypt over the Brotherhood’s proposed new constitution broke out in December, and, three months later, the riots and demonstrations and killings have still not come to an end. READ MORE >>

In the current issue of The New Republic, Evgeny Morozov offers a critical take on Steven Johnson's Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age, lamenting the “quasi-religion” of “Internet-centrism.” In his response below, Johnson says his book "actually goes out of its way to avoid that kind of naive techno-determinism." And Morozov, in a rebuttal, concludes that "Johnson doesn't understand the substance of my critique." READ MORE >>

There are two ways to be wrong about the Internet. One is to embrace cyber-utopianism and treat the Internet as inherently democratizing. Just leave it alone, the argument goes, and the Internet will destroy dictatorships, undermine religious fundamentalism, and make up for failures of institutions.1 READ MORE >>

Long after the moving images of Egypt’s Facebook-addicted, pro-democratic revolutionaries faded from Tahrir Square, they have remained firmly implanted in the minds of American observers 6,000 miles away. For much of the two years since Egypt’s uprising, many observers in Washington seemingly believed that anything in Cairo that wasn’t Mubarak was a step in a democratic direction. READ MORE >>