Anyone who has followed the recent spate of political unrest in the Middle East and elsewhere could be forgiven for thinking that a full-scale global revolution is underway, caused by digital social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter. Several media commentators, at least in the western world, create a narrative where authoritarian regimes in far-off lands such as Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and now Libya, are dramatically undermined by the free flow of information enabled by new technologies. In this simple formula, Internet growth is equated with democratization. Technology does play a pivotal role in contemporary social protests, but its role is actually a lot more complex, and definitely not causative. It is worthwhile though to first consider why such techno-centric explanations of social change capture our imagination in the first place.