It was exhilarating to follow the developments of the Egyptian Revolution (It wasn't the first one of the sort. Let's not forget - Tunisia had a successful revolt a few weeks earlier).
Nevertheless it was breath taking to observe the unfolding, in the lightning speed, events. The Social Media made it possible.
When the Communist Block was crumbling I was already in the USA, and only the newspapers, and occasionally the TV brought the news of the slow and often bloody progress of the unrest.
To the observer, they had a tremendous power, like a steam roller, but they lacked the dynamics we witnessed in the latest revolts.
On the February 11, when the Mubarak's government was no more - I twitted:
I LOVE THE SMELL OF MY iPHONE IN THE MORNING - IT SMELLS LIKE... VICTORY - tribute to Social Media #Egypt.
It was truly this technology: Twitter and Facebook which changed forever the reality in the Middle East. We have to understand that it was a system with a very well oiled suppression apparatus, with more than 1.5 Million people on the payroll of the Interior Ministry - the army of thugs, informers and the plainclothes. It was a system which owned and controlled the media in 100%.
And the system, as described above, fell like a house of cards in result of the created by Wael Ghonim Facebook page: “We Are All Khaled Said” in the memory of the murdered by the police blogger. This page became the most viewed and subscribed to page on the Internet in the Middle East. This page - this technology suddenly showed the people in the whole region, that the People had the real and unquestionable power which could no longer be suppressed and could ignite the biggest social explosion known so far, given just a spark.
The needed spark came from Tunisia when the underemployed college graduate who had to earn for living as a street vendor, who was arrested for selling goods without permit, reached the end of his rope and set himself on fire. This spark (no pun intended) spread itself like a wild fire throughout the whole region via millions of tweets on Twitter.
All the necessary information about the time of the planned demonstrations, the intended location, and all other info was received by the millions of Twitter account holders. At certain point the Mubarak's regime thought that it might have gained an upper hand if they had closed the Internet. It was too late. The Genie was out of the bottle. The technology allowed the people to get around that obstacle and 'tweet by proxy' using the foreign telephone numbers.
Probably no one, in the most far fetched predictions, anticipated that this little tool, just a 'step up' from 'texting', a tool used by a 6-years old (to tell "the world" about the color of the sky reflection in the lake water), would be the most important tool of the fight for Democracy. But it is.
As I mentioned: the Genie is out of the bottle... The demonstrations sweep through the cities of many countries in the region, but not only. The Chinese authorities already banned (the technology allows for censoring the Twitter) the hash tags associated with the Egyptian revolt. Is it going to save them? In the XXI century the flow of information is unstoppable. Time will show how far they are willing to evolve their totalitarian system giving in to the people's demands.
I myself started using Twitter (@AIR_BLOG) very short time ago. It's not a tool for everybody. Tweeting the messages about the 'celebrity sightings' is (in my humble opinion) a waste of the bandwidth. But we live in a free country - so use it any way you feel fit.
But USE IT. It may prove to be a life saver...
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