Listening to the famous and controversial historian Howard Zinn talk about Vietnam War-era civil disobedience last Thursday, I started to reflect on the relative lack of anti-war activism among members of our generation. I first mused on the cultural stereotype of lazy and apathetic youth, but I realized that far from being complacent, our generation is taking action in new ways: cyber activism and digital disobedience, media that are now as powerful, risky and potentially world-changing as protests and rallies were a generation before.Cyber activism has an incredible amount of potential because of the facilitated flow of information and elimination of traditional leadership focused around a few powerful individuals. Today, anyone can start a blog, Facebook group or petition; often, the origin or ownership of a particular cyber movement is almost irrelevant. Witness the incredible success of rallies against stringent immigration legislation that occurred across the country last year, with large contributions coming from the use of mySpace to attract English-speaking Latino American youth, and Spanish-language radio stations galvanizing many illegals and non-English speakers alike.

At Brandeis, Facebook has been extremely successful in organizing large rallies and promoting activist events. During the election season, the Internet was widely used by political groups on campus to organize phone banking. This incredible democratization of resources and tools has put untold power into the hands of individuals. Anyone can initiate an event and spread details through the online connection networks. Unlike the traditional system, which required a lot of coordination on the part of certain figures, large numbers of people are mobilized and get involved without concrete direction.

Internet campaigns are just as important as-and potentially more revolutionary than-traditional protests because they allow for digital manipulation which can potentially be seen by millions. The successful initiative by faculty and students to bring former President Jimmy Carter to Brandeis should remind us what even a few signatures can do to change policies. The Internet allows petitions previously unimaginable levels of success. For example, in 2006, Egyptian groups supporting the Palestinian Intifada recorded over 200,000 signatures in an attempt to shut down the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

Perhaps most telling of the Internet's potential to recruit activists is the practice of "hacktivism," by which individuals hack sites or servers to spread their messages. Among this tactic's biggest success stories has been the almost yearly disabling of Chinese firewalls by prominent hacktivist groups such as hacktivisto, allowing Chinese citizens unrestricted Web access. Also noteworthy is "googlebombing," which manipulates through repetition the order of sites that the search engine lists when one "googles" a topic. For instance, searching for "failure" or "miserable failure" will bring about the official Web site of the President of the United State, due to some extensive finagling on the part of activist sites.

Some might unfairly criticize today's activists for not taking the same risks as members of the peace movement or the civil-rights movement's leaders in the 1960s. But in many ways, the stakes are now even higher: Parts of the Patriot Act, for example, have facilitated government organization's, specifically the FBI's, ability to arrest activists for subversive cyber postings. In 2002, Sherman Austin, who owns the server for a popular anti-government Web site that linked to other sites, was arrested for hosting a homemade bomb recipe, despite the fact that Austin was not the author of this information, and that much more detailed information can be found in bookstores and libraries. Even more frighteningly, Austin was threatened into accepting a guilty plea, lest he be subject to up to 20 years imprisonment under "terrorism enhancement" clauses of the Patriot Act. Internet activism is neither faceless nor detached, and the punishment for disobedience of norms and laws is as real online as in the real world.

Yet, despite such risks, cyber activism presents new avenues for the politically inclined to reach out to millions. On campus, we've experienced the success of the Internet as both a coordinator for traditional activism and a budding source of new net activism with radical potential. Certainly pundits are correct when they say the traditional march on Washington has lost currency. They shouldn't, however, mourn the loss. A new wave of student potential and activism has already exploded.