{"id":7497,"date":"2011-01-30T13:03:34","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T20:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=7497"},"modified":"2011-01-30T13:03:34","modified_gmt":"2011-01-30T20:03:34","slug":"egypt-as-examined-by-one-small-sliver-of-the-american-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2011\/01\/30\/egypt-as-examined-by-one-small-sliver-of-the-american-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt as examined by one small sliver of the “American Street”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Hear what happened in Egypt?”
\n“No.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t follow the trivial, and am not always up to the minute on the news.”
\n“Well, they basically toppled the government.”
\n“Really?\u00c2\u00a0 Interesting.”
\n“And it was organized basically off of facebook and twitter.”
\n“Of course.\u00c2\u00a0 The thing is, Luddite Governments, and Luddites in governments, and every one is packed with luddites, can’t stop the tide.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll either adapt or be adapted.”
\n“What’s a Luddite?”
\n“Sigh.\u00c2\u00a0 (Clumsy and stop and search explanation for historical ludditism.)\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, today we get a lot of phony debates.\u00c2\u00a0 Take this for instance.\u00c2\u00a0 (Reference to this story<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0 Phew.\u00c2\u00a0 ‘We want our information back.’\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t work that way!\u00c2\u00a0 Egypt, they could take their cell phone service away, sure, and then what?\u00c2\u00a0 Go from a second world economy to a third?\u00c2\u00a0 You know what is a flash mob?”
\n“Sure.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course.”
\n“No.\u00c2\u00a0 The original use?”
\n“Hm?”
\n“(Literary reference to first use of ‘flash mob’, loaded with a great deal of ‘Mass mind’ and mob mentality angles.)”
\n“I’ll have to look it up.”
\n“When the Berlin Wall fell, our government knew about 10 days before, via Internet technology.\u00c2\u00a0 Information couldn’t be contained at the highest levels then, today it’s down to lower levels.”<\/p>\n

These matters are all over-simplified, even with the bright techno Utopian line.\u00c2\u00a0 Wait a few years and then see what we have in Egypt.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not really our battle, no matter that this city is now plastered with “Down With Murbarak” posters directing us to www.tinyurl.com\/diddleydoo.\u00c2\u00a0 (That’ll show Murbarak!)\u00c2\u00a0 No matter that our political partisans are jockeying to take partisan credit — “The Bush Doctrine!\u00c2\u00a0 Vindicated!”\u00c2\u00a0 (A sentiment I’d like to hope even a President Bush wouldn’t push, as doing so would surely lend events away from us.)\u00c2\u00a0 Meantime, for all the jump for joy at twitter — and the government’s suppression techniques, al Jazeera held the most extensive and meaningful coverage of any media outlet — showing government lies exposed in real time against split screens of what was actually happening.\u00c2\u00a0 Their pan-Arabic focus leading once again to autocratic forces accusing them of being “Zionist Propaganda” — those references are always amusing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Hear what happened in Egypt?” “No.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t follow the trivial, and am not always up to the minute on the news.” “Well, they basically toppled the government.” “Really?\u00c2\u00a0 Interesting.” “And it was organized basically off of facebook and twitter.” “Of course.\u00c2\u00a0 The thing is, Luddite Governments, and Luddites in governments, and every one is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7498,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7497\/revisions\/7498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}