May 11, 2005
21st Century's Democracy Comes From Citizens' “Thumbs”
Hyung-June Park Jae-Young Kim for The Dong-A Ilbo has written an interesting essay on "mobile democracy".
"These events are weighty incidents that have shaken the world this year. Behind all these incidents are mobile phones and the Internet. In other words, “mobile power” and “Internet power” made “people power.”
If the print media led a modern revolution and TV pulled down the Berlin Wall, the “thumb revolution,” represented by text messages from mobile phones and the Internet, is currently destroying the wall of a controlled society after emerging as a new kind of political power.
[...] Professor of journalism and mass media at the Hanyang University, Han Dong-seop noted, “The power to demolish a despotic state will come from ordinary people's thumbs rather than from an ‘Advance Democracy Act of 2005' from U.S. President George W. Bush.”
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