Progress is the enemy of dictatorship, or We do need this your Internet.

Jenifer Ghandy, a politilogist, has calculated that in 1970s about 75% of all regimes on the planet were personal, military or party dictatorships. Some dictators managed to leave quietly, without rebellions and revolutions – like Francisco Franco in Spain, some were killed by rebels – like Rafael Trukhilio in Dominicana. Still, all of them had a lot in common: censorship, the cult of person, repressions against opposition.

Just 1970s were the age of scientific-technical revolution in the sphere of telecommunication. Social and political life became much faster, involving greater and greater masses of people. Dictatorships just could not keep up with the progress and collapsed faster than they could adjust.

Some exceptions were those countries where new telecommunication technologies penetrated much later – in such countries the dictatorships had already partially adjust to them, making practical use of some of them.

As, for example, it was the case with “Thousand Hills” radio in Rwanda or with TV in RF.

However, now even the most progressive dictatorships are still slower than the pace of development of telecommunication technologies. Dictatorships are slowered down first of all by their conservativeness and the desire to control more and more thoroughly. For example, having built a gigantic lie machine primarily with the help of television, Putin himself cannot use a smartphone. He cannot do what even a little child can.

Some dictatorships have gone furthere, for instance, a Chinese company is now trying to organize a digital concentrational camp for the whole country. However, like any other dictatorship, it, by its very existence, is slowing down the development of new technologies in China and cannot keep up with their development in the free world.

That is why, whatever the future may be, it is clear that it is telecommunication that most significantly influences the viability of dictatorships and will finally do away with them. At least for some time. Till dictalorship-lovers invent new ways to control society.