Technology and Occupy Wall Street

In all the coverage of modern youth movements and protest movements there is always a celebration of the power that new technology has for facilitating these movements. The ability of things like facebook and twitter are lauded for bringing together people from all over the world so that everyone can partake in these protests, even if it is just through internet solidarity. Group movements no longer depend so much on geographical location as on how often they can get themselves reblogged. However this article poses a new take on this technology: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27224/   It suggests that at the same time that protests like occupy wall street have been freed by the internet, so has what they are protesting against. Even if enough protesters are able to gather on wall street to actually disrupt the everyday routines of the traders it dosen't change the actually process of what wall street really does. The real business of wall street goes on remotely through the internet and cannot be stopped by picket lines. it is an interesting paradox that both the protesters and what they are protesting have become abstractions of their former concrete selves through the internet, making both of them more,far-reaching, powerful and harder to control.
- Hannah