@nemomen, re: as to “why” / “what does this hope to accomplish”
In this type of social disruption demo, the protesters target should ideally be the Mayor (or/and the city council) whom they “disrupt” by first disrupting civilian “daily life” / “ease of mind”. Civilians will then also complain loudly to those who can do something about this. – heck, if done well enough, even the Governor may call to ask the Mayor WTF is going on in their city?!.
The good will / happiness of civilians is just sacrificed on the short term for long term goals
If after this demo, 200 people were then organized to do this sort of disruption and targeted a major sports game/event? There would be people at the top who would lose jobs, those still in power would be publicly shamed, would not be able to show they have control over their city (lose $), phones would be ringing off the hook and the city would be clamoring for “discussions to stop the protests”.
Ultimately, if done well, this type of disruption protest forces the Mayor to open a dialog with your representative who’ll arrive with the necessary public pressure behind them to be taken seriously. All achieved by non-violent means.
If done poorly, or as a “stand-alone protest” you just burn civilian goodwill capital for nothing. I’m guessing this was the path that was chosen because I don’t remember this happening?
@Mindysan33 re: gloss over the downsides of new technologies:
Thanks to
everyone is now walking around with their AV turned on… most people play it in the “privacy” of their own homes… is google going to get to use this data to update street view, do we know?
Wouldn’t the data mostly go to the company that made the game? If google gets some of the data, would they only use it to improve street views, or to better market their users data?
You should read that article I posted… it’s long, but well worth the time investment. It talks about that aspect of technology (surveillance from a corporate and a government POV), but also the aspect of how people who either don’t want to participate in social media that exploits the data we generate online or can’t due to lack of access can end up lonelier and left out, as people move their social lives online more and more.
None of this means that these technologies can’t be positive, but that there are downsides to how they are being used right now.
ETA:
This is precisely what has happened in Atlanta, though the outcome of the discussions have not gone the way the protesters wanted. They are still unhappy with the changes Mayor Reed proposed at this point (or some of what he proposed, at least).
Did this happen? It doesn’t seem like an effective technique at all, since it seems like it’s far more likely to increase resentment against protestors and justify cracking down harder on disruptions, but I know little about these things. This was six months ago. Did it work?
