As regime after regime fell, the world watched transfixed, glued to the social media feeds of thousands of young people from the region who had taken to tweeting, streaming, and reporting from the ground.

What contemporary object can be both a tool and a weapon, like the machete? Communication technologies like cell phones might serve as one candidate, especially in light of their application during the “Arab Spring.” But can the iPhone ever bear the same gravitas as the machete? Is silicon the new steel? Information has been a part of every arsenal, revolutionary or otherwise. Still, it’s hard to imagine driving a smartphone into a body “down to the Apple.”

That’s how Isis is recruiting and growing.

the social media narrative recalled Cold War ideas that capitalist technology would triumph over communist inefficiency, as if people in the Middle East couldn’t have rebelled on their own without the gifts of American entrepreneurs. In the end, whatever was tweeted, there was no Twitter revolution in Iran.