Written right before I left for the airport:
It's amazing to me that despite the fact that the internet blackout here is near-total, people on the news are still asking if this, too, is a Twitter Revolution ™ , leading me to wonder if there's anything talking heads and e-literati do not think is a Twitter Revolution. In the early stages, sure, lots of people were communicating by facebook, but the major action happened after the internet went out. Much of the protesting was organized the old-fashioned way, by word of mouth, and, once service came back on, by phone. I'm not sure if it's an irony, or a straightforward rebuttal to the people who think that technology is an agent rather than a tool, that Egypt, among the most social media-savvy of Arab countries, finally rose up after the internet went dark.
don't forget Wikileaks / the global economic crash / Global Warming (via food price spike via fires in Russia) / Al Jazeera / Zionism and/or Al Qaeda... under no circumstances could it be because Mubarak is an asshole, or that Egyptians want democracy, or that the world is a complex place and multiple factors acting as the root and proximate causes for anything and everything that ever happens
ReplyDeletebut, shutting down the internet did violate rule #100 of the "how to be an evil overlord" list:
"Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access."