Stardate 20011117.1643 (On Screen): The Arab world is facing the dilemma of the Internet: if they refuse to use it, they'll fall behind technologically and economically, but if they permit widespread use then they have to accept American-style freedom of expression. Most of the Arab states, even such "liberal" ones as Saudi Arabia, have tight controls over the press and broadcast media. If they embrace the internet then their people will have access to all the dangerous ideas it contains: criticism of their governments, political concepts of liberty, more accurate knowledge of how their nations actually fit into the world (and how unimportant many of them really are), attitudes about sex and life and human interactions, pictures of naked people having sex and doing other fun things -- even the ravings of a demented starship captain who sometimes dreams that he lives in San Diego.
And most dangerous of all: they'll meet and get to know people in other nations, and discover that they're actually really quite nice folks, and not demons incarnate after all. That's because the Internet is all or nothing. You can't part-way access it. Other nations as varied as Singapore and China have tried to use it without the body politic being seduced by it, and have mostly failed. The larger a nation, the less able it will be to keep control over the uncontrolled flow of ideas, which are the currency of the internet. (It is, after all, the most efficient means of transporting information that the world has yet seen.) Ideas and knowledge are the most dangerous thing there is to authoritarian regimes; once people find out just how petty and incompetent and brutal their own governments are, they will agitate for change.
Which is why I think that this meeting in Dubai will come to nothing. It's true that lack of access to the internet will hold the Arab nations back and make them uncompetitive. But permitting access will cause Arab governments to fall -- and that's more important. (To the governments.) (discussion in progress)
