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Consider one of the major social movements of the twentieth century, from civil rights in the United States to Gandhi’s nonviolent protests in India. How would technology have changed it? Would change have come more quickly or more slowly? Defend your opinion.

User BrettJ
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I am going to take as an example the Civil Rights movement in the United States, that movement which sought to ensure the rights and liberties of African Americans, and later on, of other underprivileged minorities. This movement was characterized by the persistent seeking of the reassertion of the voting, and other rights, for African Americans, at a time when they were being not just ignored as citizens, but treated as inferior.

This movement did not simply start in the 1960´s, nor was it just the result of a fashion from a few years. It was a movement that began almost from the foundation of the United States, but which saw its epitome in the 60´s with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

It is not very feasible to guess what would have happened had technology, especially communications technology been present, especially at the very beginnings of the movement, but it is certain that, given the characteristics of the world today, it could be surmised that the capacity to connect with others, to communicate information in a massive way, and the availability of such tools as social media, would have probably ensured much faster acceptance of the fact that African Americans were citizens, and had the same rights, and were equal to, their white American counterparts.

I also believe that had social media, television, and other means of communication, been available at the time, not just Americans, but the world at large, would have become involved in the Movement, probably bringing about the outcomes much faster than they did without them.

Thus, technology would have had a major role in ensuring the faster fulfillment of the outcomes that were sought by the Civil Rights movement, and probably, would have avoided some of the uneccessary aggressiveness that ensued at some points of it.

User Tader
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