This was going to be a blog about communication styles between the left and right and the common folk. But that will have to wait, I am afraid. With the protests in Tunisia and now Egypt it has become obvious to this blogger that our current methods of personal communication with cell phones and the Internet and social media will simply not cut the mustard when we need to get the messages out and among ourselves about what is happening in the streets, what we want and plan to do about it and what the world needs to know. When it is obvious that a government can shut down the internet and cell phone access when ever it wants. Prevent news agencies from covering a situation and hassles and/or detains those who are reporting, it is imperative that a method of communication that is not dependent on the private sector or governments is necessary. At least temporarily.
The technology exists now like it never has before. What is necessary is to learn and create alternatives. To use our natural inventiveness to make a system that can be put into place so that our story gets out regardless of the circumstances. It would not need to be pretty or even perfect. It just has to work.
1 comment:
While I admit I'm less familiar with our communication network structures at a "vital points" level, I have to think it's far easier to clamp things down in nations where such things are nationalized.
I question whether Holy Joe's longed-for "off switch" could exist without doing irreparable damage to our economy and our society in general. Banking, traffic control, the power grid, and more are dependent on networked communications.
Doing a nationwide comms shutdown, or even trying to seal the electronic borders, would be the electronic communications version of destroying a village in order to save it.
Look what happened when some nations recently wanted to control Blackberries. Their business communities, and RIM, kicked up enough of a fuss that the governments backed down, at least to some extent.
How long do you think it would be until someone started hacking things?
As for alternatives, they'd have to be secure, fast, and commonplace enough to be practical, which is to say nearly universal. Otherwise, they're not going to matter.
Maybe people need to refresh their Morse code memories and relearn spark-gap transmission?
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