Segment from the above article, by Craig Kanally, submitted for review:
"When Internet and mobile services were cut off in Egypt on Thursday night, though landlines were operational, members immediately got to work to send information to Egyptian fax numbers. ...
...The activists thus began providing instructions for using dial-up modems and amateur radios, known as Ham radios, which the Egyptian people could use to communicate.
The group says it's also worked on receiving and decoding amateur radio messages, sent on frequencies recommended by the group of activists. While these groups have only been able to receive a small amount of messages of a short length with an unknown source, the Egyptian people's use of amateur radio to transmit messages represents an interesting utilization of old-fashioned technology to circumvent government restrictions."
You Can't Stop the Signal.
And that's the beauty of this thing we've built. We have the Library of Alexandria, rolled up with the Forum, sitting in our homes, at our fingertips. And it has connected us, irrevocably, and these connections have transformed us and the way that we interact, and when that is taken away, we will find a way to take it back.
Human beings are, first and foremost, social creatures, and our era possess the most powerful social tool in history - because it's not just a way to communicate, it's a record of unimaginable depth and breadth. People ask what's going to come after the Internet, but I really think we haven't finished exploring what we've got now. We haven't yet reached the full extent of the way the Internet can change us and what we do.
You want to bring democracy to Egypt? Bring the Internet back to them. Because the Internet is the Great Equalizer. When we all have the same information, we can all apply our various perspectives to a situation, draw conclusions, hone our ideas using the ideas of others - and there's power in that. Knowledge is not Wisdom, but it is Power. And it's in the hands of everyone that can walk into a library and sit down at a computer. Granted, it's not everyone yet, but it's a heck of a start.
Here's to the beauty of it all.
