Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt
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"would weigh more or less heavily"
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
I'm struggling to bridge this with "the Twitter generation", see?
I understand that, but I do think its almost impossible to understate the access to the kind simple communication we take for granted that the newer generation mobile phone has given much of the developing world (which the UN classes Egypt as - and this is even more so in the north where this stuff seems to be mostly happening). Twitter is but one network - Facebook is vastly more important.
And the uber budget net-enabled sub-smartphone is the tool that has done this.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
The commentary this week fortunately is focussing a bit more on social and historical root causes and political prospects, so let's celebrate that.
I don't see why we have to exclude thoughts about the mechanics of it all from that celebration???
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Again, I'm not suggesting it's not a legitimate story, merely that it's not the story. Which up until last week it was (see asinine references to "the Twitter generation", for instance on the Herald.)
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Firstly these are urban dwellers, thus tend not to be the rural poor.
I only spent a couple of days in Cairo and it seemed to me that our definition of urban doesn't match Cairo. Most of the people in Cairo are very poor by our standards. I don't really think there is much to pick between the urban poor of Cairo (20 million plus) and the rural poor.
Sure the urban rich are different.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
for instance on the Herald
Mostly I try not to.
But, yes, no argument.
Tweet (sorry) from Ferdi Zebua, RTed by George Darroch:
Once more, a sentiment oft repeated lately: yes, #Egypt 2011 should learn from Indonesia '98. Complete your revolution.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
I don't really think there is much to pick between the urban poor of Cairo (20 million plus) and the rural poor.
If this is reliable, the percentage of very poor is much higher in the rural regions. Urban I guess in this means the central parts of the mass, metropolitan the greater sprawl including the middle class 'burbs.
our definition of urban doesn't match Cairo.
I think you can say that about much of the developing world though. I doubt if you took most New Zealanders to the urban hellholes of greater Jakarta or Manilla they would use the word city with ease.
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recordari, in reply to
A Guide: How Not To Say Stupid Stuff About Egypt
That was helpful, and reading some of the 248 comments (last I looked) most agree.
CNN reports Elbaradei saying Mubarak's statement was a deception.
I found this Inside Story report from last year informative as background and the hurdles of changing the Egyptian government. At that time, they weren't very hopeful.
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Surprise surprise (as if he doesn't have enough blood on his hands), Blair trying to justify his hand in propping up Mubarak and his torturers, arguing that Israel's right to lay siege to the Palestinians and slowly settle their lands is more important than a bunch of "well-meaning" plebs on the streets of Egypt who think they have some sort of chance at democracy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/02/tony-blair-mubarak-courageous-force-for-good-egypt -
I don't know much about social networking and all I know of Marshall McLuhan comes from Woody Allen movies but writing developed in conjuction with the emergence of large-scale social organisation - that could not have happened without writing.
So social structure and information technology have been feeding off each other for a long time.
I think there's quite a few other linkages between information ,technology and human society. That social networking might play a critical and new role in social change I think is quite possible.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
. . . all I know of Marshall McLuhan comes from Woody Allen movies . . .
There was the walk-on role in Annie Hall, but that was about it for his screen career. My favourite McLuhan tech quote:
“The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.”
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No, nor does a phone talk. But they help with that.
I'm reminded of an argument that I saw two history professors have about the significance of the development of European maritime technology in the 'discovery' and settling of the Americas.
Which is to say that arguments about the role technology plays in major social changes are nothing new, and not quickly resolved.
My point-of-view is that from the longer perspective of history, we tend to assign greater roles to technological change as we are able to take a wider view of them. You look for causes that related to significant social changes and assign them as causative.
I predict 25 years from now we'll probably be talking about facebook and twitter (and whatever follows them) as '21st century revolutionary tools' of the developing world.
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Neil Morrison, in reply to
My point-of-view is that from the longer perspective of history, we tend to assign greater roles to technological change as we are able to take a wider view of them. You look for causes that related to significant social changes and assign them as causative.
it's a bit chicken and egg but cuneiform did arise from the need to keep records of agricultural production and organised agriculture was the basis for "civilisation".
Thus Spoke Zarathustra disolves into The Blue Danube.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
I don't know much about social networking and all I know of Marshall McLuhan comes from Woody Allen movies but writing developed in conjuction with the emergence of large-scale social organisation - that could not have happened without writing.
I think the go-to guy for this one is actually the Harold Innis of Empire and Communications (1950). I have the chances that the journos who are spouting off about the Twitter generation might have read him down as slim to nil.
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Mubarak's thugs out on the streets pretending to be demonstrators, inciting violence, probably so Mubarak can argue that he needs to get his thugs back on the streets in riot gear and guns.
Protesters were very gracious in telling Mubarak to leave. I hope they try to hold onto him now and take him to court, but perhaps he's a dead man walking.
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Egyptian blogger Ali Seif's Twitter stream has been providing an extraordinary and alarming account of events inside Tahrir Square.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I think the go-to guy for this one is actually the Harold Innis of Empire and Communications (1950). I have the chances that the journos who are spouting off about the Twitter generation might have read him down as slim to nil.
So clearly any insights or observations they might have in 2011 are invalid. Good to know.
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Trying to watch the video on http://english.aljazeera.net/ but keeps saying ‘Video not found’. Just the opening shot of Tahrir Square looks bad enough.
he’s a dead man walking.
They said that in a report last night, but not sure it is the reality. He is not going down without a fight. Perhaps the time for conciliatory rhetoric is over, and the diplomatic pressure from outside needs to be ramped up.
Mind you, using the word ‘massacre’ should not be done lightly, and it would be irresponsible of wider media to start quoting twitter as truth without some harder evidence.
I can see how it is providing insights into the people on the ground, but I would also look slightly askance at reports from someone who claims;
Oh and a cool vampire. Cullens have nothing on me!
in his bio.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
So clearly any insights or observations they might have in 2011 are invalid. Good to know.
For people who work in media to completely ignore media theory does tend to make their commentary less informed, yes.
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Some news coverage here
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41383377/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/
conatining this:
Bloodied anti-government protesters were taken to makeshift clinics in mosques and alleyways. Some pleaded for protection from soldiers stationed at the square, but the soldiers did nothing to stop the violence, beyond firing an occasional shot in the air.
and this:
Earlier Wednesday, a military spokesman appeared on state TV and asked the protesters to disperse so life in Egypt could get back to normal. That was a major turn in the attitude of the army, which for the past few days allowed protests to swell to their largest yet on Tuesday when a quarter-million peacefully packed into Tahrir Square.
which doesn't sound good.
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Sacha, in reply to
I think the go-to guy for this one is actually the Harold Innis of Empire and Communications (1950)
I can see why Harold Innis' interest in *permanance* would attract your interest, Gio.
One of Innis's primary contributions to communications studies was to apply the dimensions of time and space to various media. He divided media into time-binding and space-binding types. Time-binding media are durable. They include clay or stone tablets. Space-binding media are more ephemeral. They include modern media such as radio, television, and mass circulation newspapers.
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Harold Innis's analysis of the effects of communications on the rise and fall of empires led him to warn grimly that Western civilization was now facing its own profound crisis. The development of powerful communications media such as mass-circulation newspapers had shifted the balance decisively in favour of space and power, over time, continuity and knowledge. The balance required for cultural survival had been upset by what Innis saw as "mechanized" communications media used to transmit information quickly over long distances. These media had contributed to an obsession with "present-mindedness" wiping out concerns about past or future.[57] Innis wrote,
The overwhelming pressure of mechanization evident in the newspaper and the magazine, has led to the creation of vast monopolies of communication. Their entrenched positions involve a continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity.
However (without having read the source I must emphasise), I'd say he seems understandably caught in a 1950s dichotomy that does not apply so neatly now - unlike radio, tv or newspapers, online and social media have linkable continuity and archival memory as well as reach and immediate impact. But then Gladwell would disagree..
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
I can see why Harold Innis' interest in *permanance* would attract your interest, Gio.
I was more thinking of his idea that new communication technologies introduce a bias in favour of certain forms of organisation, rather than being strict determinants.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
For people who work in media to completely ignore media theory does tend to make their commentary less informed, yes.
Call me a journalist, but that seems less important to me right now than simply trying to get a grasp on the extraordinary reportage flowing out of Egypt, via all the means we've been discussing.
More praise for Al Jazeera -- they handle this stuff so well. Just now on the live stream they re-screened a YouTube clip purporting to depict a makeshift medical centre in Cairo, carefully noting that its source was not verified. They're making extensive use of Twitter, to hear from both their own correspondents and other reporters. It's extraordinary, and I don't think there is any doubt this is shaping international responses on a minute-by-minute basis.
What role the technologies are playing in Egypt itself is, of course, much harder to know.
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Al Jazeera has a page aggregating real-time tweets from its staff.
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