Twitter Suggested for Nobel Peace Prize
pcworld.com
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Although important, that's was not promoting peace, it was promoting a revolution. And why should the creator of the platform receive the credit for its user content? If it was not Twitter people would be doing the same over email. Should we award instead the creator of the the web, or the creator of the integrated circuit or ...
I do think that it's a pretty frivolous nomination, given the history of the Peace Prize.
That said, I think the nomination reflects a major change we're living through: where change, revolution, and the peace that will hopefully come (as ousting Ahmadinejad will remove a violent, seemingly war-bent leader) are dictated by a self-organizing community, not a common voice speaking through an individual.
If the latter view becomes more prevalent over the coming years, who better to give the Peace Prize to than those who make self-organization possible and "sticky"?
What's ridiculous today can easily become tomorrow's future (a PC in every home? Don't get me started...).
I posted my opinion about Honduras situation (which is very similar, and I would say worse than Iran's, and still didn't get much press... interesting ah?):
I mean...if you're going to suggest that a technology provider be given a Nobel Peace Prize for Iranian protests, at least pick something that had a significant effect -- like a cell phone network. Because despite all of the press that Twitter received, there's not that much evidence that it played any significant role in the protests. And for every one person using Twitter, there were hundreds -- if not thousands -- of people using cell-phones to communicate about the protests, with little fanfare or media attention.
http://www.slate.com/id/2220736/
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/remember_moldova.php
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/04/17/04
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/06/19/01
I suppose that you could argue that Twitter was responsible for bringing the Iranian protests into the American media spotlight, but the thing about the coverage was that it was mostly about Twitter, only superficially about Iran. You could tune into any major media outlet and hear gobs about how precious, precocious Twitter was so important to the Iranian protests that the US State Department wouldn't let them take downtime -- but you didn't hear that much about the Iranian protests! It was an example of US media navel-gazing, at its finest.
First the article says that a former US national security advisor thinks twitter should get a Nobel peace prize. There's a long way from that to credible speculation that they'll get one. There are no claims from inside sources, a claim that PG thinks Sam Odio should get the Nobel Prize in physics would be equally credible.
Second the committee that decides who gets the prize is secret and doesn't leak information. And it's in Sweden. The article qoutes US sources that have nothing to do with the process.
Third historically nobel prizes are only given once it's proven that you weren't wrong, primarily for political reasons. Twitter isn't quite there yet, they may well be bankrupt next year. There are exceptions to this rule but they are rare.
You may as well nominate AT&T or some other phone company.
Plus he currently just has 239 followers n Twitter. Maybe this is just "get more followers" stunt.