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The first political turmoil tagged with the name of “Twitter Revolution” occurred in April 2009. In Moldova, protesters angry about parliamentary elections that gave a majority of seats to the Communist Party used social media to organize anti-government demonstrations. Later that year, a contentious election in Iran prompted what was called the Green Revolution, another antigovernment movement that, again, exploited the use of the Internet and new media. These two events would be harbingers of 2011 “Arab Spring” uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. In both, videos taken by cell phones and disseminated by Facebook played key roles in successfully accomplishing the goal of regime change. Closer to home, this same combination of devices prompted public outrage over a viral video on YouTube depicting police casually pepper-spraying seemingly peaceful protesters at University of California–Davis.

Though it is too simplistic to say the new media “caused” these events, there is still ample evidence to suggest that we have entered a new era in global politics in which mobile communication devices coupled with social media apps are changing the way ideas are disseminated and bodies are mobilized. Social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson terms these events “augmented revolutions.”

For people whose actions are augmented by this technology, the primary interface with the virtual world is the cell phone. At the end of 2007, New York Times technology columnist David Pogue deemed that year (in which the iPhone was introduced) “The Year of the Cellphone.” As Pogue said, 2007 was the year that “all kinds of interesting phones and services were made interesting because they married Internet data with the phones in our pocket.”¹ Since that time, it seems that every year has seen greater developments in cell phone change and growth. Beginning in 2008, the iPhone has spawned the creation of more than 500,000 apps—applications made by companies and independent programmers alike. These apps represent the software created for the cell phone hardware that was deployed so effectively in the Moldovan, Iranian, Tunisian, and Egyptian uprisings. But the apps also enable smartphone users to do things like play games, travel efficiently, or do business. By early 2012, more than ten billion apps had been downloaded.

What apps do you have on your mobile phone? Which do you consider to be essential to conducting your everyday life? In what ways has the mobile, wireless digital experience augmented and even defined your life? As we explore media convergence in the newest communication technologies, think about how these ever-present interfaces with the virtual world are changing, from the political to the personal.

THE INTERNET—the vast network of telephone and cable lines, wireless connections, and satellite systems that link and carry computer information worldwide—was described early on as the information superhighway. This description suggests that people envisioned a new system for conveying information that would replace the old one (books, newspapers, television, and radio). Created in the 1950s, the Internet was a government-sponsored technology enabling military and academic researchers in different locations to share information and findings by computer. Drawing on the technology used to build the first computer (the ENIAC, invented in 1946), the Internet exploited the power of digitization. Through digitization, information in analog form (such as text or pictures) is translated into binary code—a series of ones and zeros that can be encoded in software and transmitted between computers.

In many ways, the original description of the Internet has turned out to be accurate: This medium has expanded dramatically from its initial incarnation to a vast entity that encompasses all other media today (video and audio content in addition to text). Since becoming a mass medium in the mid-1990s, the Internet has transformed the way we do business, communicate, socialize, entertain ourselves, and get information—in short, it has profoundly touched the way most of us interact with media across all aspects of our lives.

Unlike other mass media, the Internet seems to have no limits: More and more content is being made accessible on it, more and more people are gaining access to it, and more and more types of media are converging on it. But one thing is certain: As governments, corporations, and public and private interests vie to shape the Internet so it suits their needs, the questions of who will have access to it and who will control it are taking on more urgency.

In this chapter, we explore these questions, along with the Internet’s impact on various aspects of our lives by: