I think protests have become more ineffective over time. We started to see that in 2011 with the Arab Spring. People were saying it was Twitter that enabled those, but I would argue on the other side that extreme transparency from social media makes it much more difficult for leaders to continue a movement once it starts. It is too easy to tear it down by millions of paper cuts, and it fizzles out.
We've seen that over and over again the last 15 years.
I haven’t seen anything specifically about the effectiveness of protests over time, but I think they haven't been that effective overall, even historically. I think the best I've seen is the quote I inserted above, which was from a 2018 study looking back 30 years, but it doesn't look they studied the time variable.
That said, my argument here is, essentially, that while they are usually ineffective, if the ingredients are just right, then they can be effective, including in the present, and those ingredients might end up being just right for the case of AI and jobs: truly bipartisan (wheras most protests are partisan), directly affecting a significant amount of the population (wheras most protests are indirect), and affecting most demographic groups (wheras most protests are more narrow). The other ingredient is time though, whether a large effect happens over a shorter period of time like a few years vs. diffused over several decades.
I think protests have become more ineffective over time. We started to see that in 2011 with the Arab Spring. People were saying it was Twitter that enabled those, but I would argue on the other side that extreme transparency from social media makes it much more difficult for leaders to continue a movement once it starts. It is too easy to tear it down by millions of paper cuts, and it fizzles out.
We've seen that over and over again the last 15 years.
I haven’t seen anything specifically about the effectiveness of protests over time, but I think they haven't been that effective overall, even historically. I think the best I've seen is the quote I inserted above, which was from a 2018 study looking back 30 years, but it doesn't look they studied the time variable.
That said, my argument here is, essentially, that while they are usually ineffective, if the ingredients are just right, then they can be effective, including in the present, and those ingredients might end up being just right for the case of AI and jobs: truly bipartisan (wheras most protests are partisan), directly affecting a significant amount of the population (wheras most protests are indirect), and affecting most demographic groups (wheras most protests are more narrow). The other ingredient is time though, whether a large effect happens over a shorter period of time like a few years vs. diffused over several decades.