Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

googleblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 111 posts

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#2

Post by danteembermage »

This should significantly raise the economic cost to stifling speech in Egypt for the current regime (shutting down the phone system is probably significantly more disruptive to daily life that the internet there). Of course assuming locals manage to find out about it.

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#3

Post by nathanb »

Interesting...in the old days, those phone numbers would go to the news desk of some major media corporation. The fact that (at least purportedly) Egyptians would consider getting their tidbits on Twitter--and the fact that Twitter scales better for this sort of thing than even the largest old-media institution--seems profound.

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#7

Post by austinB »

This is an absolutely great idea that strikes a blow to regimes who try to suppress uprisings by shutting down the internet. I can't say I am entirely optimistic about the direction Egypt will take if open elections are held, but their citizens have a right to have their voice heard.

That being said, the 'nonchalantness' in this line regarding the SayNow acquisition was quite funny, "We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality."

Well done Google.

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#8

Post by sfphotoarts »

Thousands of years seemed to go by where uprisings didn't need social networking.

The Babylonians didn't need Twitter when they rose up against the Assyrian Empire. The Inaros' didn't need Facebook when they confronted the Persians in Egypt (although they did have the help of the Greeks). Julius Caesar didn't tweet 'hey watch out Pompey' when he marched on Roma. Did the Sicilian Vespers need Twitter to alter the balance of European power under King Charles 1st. Maybe the great Peasant revolt in Medieval England would have been more successful had they used Twitter - although they did manage to keep the term poll tax out of the tax lexicon for 600 years. Then, of course, the period of history after Elizabeth 1st where pretty much everyone revolted at some point (even here in America) those all seemed to happen without need for social networking.

I think humans are perfectly well equipped to revolt without social media. The currency of revolt has always been large numbers and big sticks.

Maybe our (the HN community) sees the world through a lens that makes it impossible to accomplish what is an everyday occurrence (on the historical scale) without the internet.

Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

#9

Post by blhack »

nathanb wrote: post #3

Interesting...in the old days, those phone numbers would go to the news desk of some major media corporation. The fact that (at least purportedly) Egyptians would consider getting their tidbits on Twitter--and the fact that Twitter scales better for this sort of thing than even the largest old-media institution--seems profound.

I included this point on a "reasons it's already the future" list I made the other day (http://www.thingist.com/t/pageview/1674/).

We all more-or-less own internationally syndicated newspapers now. Twitter is just the most common one.

Post reply on HN