Egyptian Revolution and the Internet

The Egyptian Revolution seems to be ubiquitous in the world today; every instance you open a newspaper or turn on a TV it's right there in front of you. And rightfully so! This is one of the largest political revolutions to occur in long time, and it's outcome could have the potential to affect the whole world. The internet block Egypt enacted upon it's people has also been heavily publicized; I thought I might offer a bit of my insight into the role of internet in this revolution.

Before I go further into this idea, it's important to first understand some background information about this movement . On January 25th, people began to protest in the streets of Cairo, perhaps inspired by the recent successful revolution in Tunisia. The protesters were expressing dissent about many aspects of Egypt, such as widespread unemployment and poverty. Yet the foremost of their remonstrations was with the corrupt government of Hosni Mubarak, who had controlled the country for 30 years. In response to these early protests, Egypt blocked Twitter and finally the whole internet, a huge source of incoming and outgoing news for the Egyptians. The government was cutting an important lifeline away from the people, hoping it would conceal the revolution from the rest of the world. Ironically, the internet block actually brought more attention to the revolution, as many people realized what an extreme event was happening before their eyes. The government perhaps hoped that, without internet, the egyptian people would not be as able to efficiently communicate, and thus the protests would die down. Just look at the recent Tunisian Revolution, the main mode of communication there was by use of the internet and social networking sites such as facebook. After all, the internet is one of the main method of communication between people, with it gone would the protests continue? The answer is yes, for the most obvious reason: people were able to get around the internet block and still band together to protest. Do you think blocking the internet could ever totally halt a revolution? Personally, I think not in the modern day and age, as there are always methods to finding ones way around a block and also there are other modes of communication such as TV, newspaper, telephone and radio. While they may seem less efficient as the speedy internet, they are still quite effective, but mind you, much slower. In a way MKA is a micro society that backs up my opinion. The students as a whole rely on their computers to communicate, yet when it's necessary we get together in assemblies to spread information. Don't get me wrong, If the computers were cut out from our system it would be much harder for things to get done, but they would still happen, so long as we had motivation to do so. I do think that in the future, when society becomes more dependent on the internet for information ( and we are going in that direction) that it will be increasingly difficult to have a large scale uprising. People are already so glued to their computer screens, I can't imagine what it will be like in a few decades.