2 Billion

When you consider the public spaces today as opposed to a century ago, it's a very different atmosphere. Because of population expansion and devotion to technology, we are becoming further and further apart from each other physically - the world just doesn't demand the intimate closeness it used to. This means that the town halls and the forums and large, community gatherings where people would meet, greet and exchange ideas are a thing of the past.

Now, we have to find a way to communicate and exchange ideas that isn't bogged down by physical restrictions. This has presented itself, as two billion people worldwide can attest to, in the internet. We've seen - especially in recent weeks with the London riots being mobilized over Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry messenger - that digital communication is the new forum for ideas.

The internet, since is presents that unique ability to connect over shared ideas with people you would normally not meet in your day-to-day life, has become a way of establishing new communities while helping existing communities connect without having to arrange meeting times or match schedules. The anonymity it grants also allows people to exchange their true ideas a lot easier than they would in a physical forum. This is where the problem can sometimes lie.

Because people can share any kind of ideas with a presumably limitless audience, this means that they can pretty rapidly spread an idea or concept that could be dangerous. This can be both a threat to government, who has to decide what ideas to act on and what ideas to ignore, and the people have to be careful to decide what ideas are worth fighting for, and then protect them from a particularly overbearing government.

It creates a dynamic juggling act that increases tension between the government and the governed, with the former finding the fine line of safety and censorship and the latter trying to filter out the myriad of opinions and ideas that are thrust upon them to find something that's really worth fighting for.

Having always lived with the 1st Amendment hearing of situations where ideas are being withheld and the internet being censored really ruffles my feathers. Knowing that words are powerful is no reason to fear them, and attempting to censor them just because to give your people the power of he idea makes the staunch information freedom advocate in me tremble with anger.

It's an interesting strategy, but when you're oppressing the populace, it serves more to rattle the cages you've put them in than it does to shut down their lines of communications. Whether it's utilizing the internet in the Occupy Wall Street or utilizing Blackberry messenger to organize the riots in London, the people are always going to find ways to mobilize (pardon the pun).

The biggest problem is that when they find a government has been trying to keep them down by cutting off those efforts, it's just going to stoke the core of the fire even more.