Rebelion 2

I already did a blog earlier on the revolution in Egypt but I decided to do some more research on how technology affected the revolution. I was surprised when I wasn’t able to find much on how technology helped. The first links I went to only described how people used tweeter to tell the rest of the world about what happened. Then I found an article about Wael Ghonim. He worked for google and started a facebook page for another leader who was for democracy. He then made another page about police brutality. The facebook about police brutality took off and was constantly being hit with pictures, videos, and comments about brutality and the injustices taking place in the country. Only 21 percent of the country has access to the internet. That doesn’t seem like a lot but that is 16 million people. I feel like the internet brought the country together. The first protest had 50,000 people saying that they would attend on facebook. It’s hard to get a protest started just by the word of mouth. If you only hear it from one person it doesn’t sound that powerful but if you know 50,000 people attend then you believe in it. The website also urged people to spread the news to people they know. This must have gotten the news spread like wildfire. The internet brought the people together and started the revolution. It allowed the revolution to start because the revolution didn’t need a leader. If there was a leader then the revolt would have been easily dismantled. All the government would have to do is get rid of the leader. Fortunately since the facebook page was made anonymous under the name El Shaheed so it was too late when the government found Wael Ghonim. Even after he was arrested there were other people with contingency plans ready to take over the website. This is really the first time that technology was used this way in a major political event. The internet was used to start the revolution by sparking the ideas and got the ball rolling. The government did shut down the internet after a week but there was a lot of other technology used. The protesters also used older technologies such as ham radios for morse code. The people were also able to connect to the internet with dialup modems, fax machines, and twitter on their cell phones. The government took too long to stop the movement and with the use of technology the people were able to spread messages across the country. The internet has given people around the world to communicate and spread their ideas. This makes it easier for people to band together and fight for their ideas.