Digital Revolutionaries

Few events in recent times have highlighted the liberating use of digital technology like the protests and upheaval in Iran following the somewhat suspect election.

While the authorities scramble to clamp down on the free use of cell phones, blogs, and tweets, innovative citizens find new loopholes to keep the world informed despite the best and ongoing effort of the ruling regime.

With only about 9,000 tweeter registrants whose profile indicate that they are from Iran, it is doubtful that the often reported romantic notion of the "Twitter Revolution" bears much resemblance to truth. Much more likely is that the word about demonstrations got out via regular land lines, cell phone, SMS messaging, and good old door-to-door word of mouth.

However, there is no denying that Twitter has been instrumental in keeping the world informed about events in Teheran and elsewhere in Iran. Witness the Obama Administration's request that Twitter defer regularly schedule maintenance from July 15 to later the next day (and what a PR coup for Twitter).

But consider the risk the tweeters (and bloggers) are running:

Winston Smith, in George Orwell's 1984, was very wary of the Ministry of Love's telescreens which monitored all inhabitants of Oceania: "The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide."

The Iranian Ministry of Love is probably not sleeping much these days, busy tracing and tracking cell calls, tweets, blog posts, etc. that have not found a way to hide their IP addresses behind proxies. Also, the Ministry of Love has of course blocked the Twitter site, and getting around that takes the kind of geek mind that perhaps is not prevalent in Teheran as yet.

Still word keeps coming, cell-videos, tweets, blogs, keeping the world informed, much recorded and reported at personal peril. These, to my mind, are the true digital revolutionaries of today.

And it seems like the digital genie is out of the Iranian lamp, and despite concerted regime efforts to stuff it back in, it will remain released.