What can one say about the upheaval in Egypt? These are dangerous times, yes. But conservatives and Republicans make a mistake when lapsing into doom and gloom. This is a tremendous opportunity for the United States of America and should be seen as such. For example, Wretchard highlights Sandmonkey's advocacy of an "Egyptian Unity Party" as a way to keep liberty advancing within Egypt:
There is nothing wrong with the core idea; it is in fact the same idea behind the primary challenge process, interstate compacts, and even the Constitutional amendment process. In all of these, the Internet plays a major part. The U.S. Tea Party, for example, lives on Facebook. Because form follows function, the Internet is going to play a major role in any subsequent Egyptian shakeup — unless we leave it to the moustache Petes.
The principal difference is that Tea Party USA can move between the online and real worlds seamlessly. There are no secret police with whips mounted on camels on Main Street, no dark torture chambers or thugs wearing cheap suits awaiting Tea Party USA members down at the local convention center. Egypt is different. Nevertheless, without getting too wild-eyed about the prospects of Sandmonkey’s program, common sense says that something ought to be done to nurture and assist the spontaneous component of the Egyptian revolution that sprang from activity online. Online is where young and largely secular youth live, much more than the mosque, and it would be remiss not to recognize it.
Two things in particular would help the Egyptians greatly.
- First, one can lobby the U.S. government to tell Egypt not to shut down the Internet again;
- U.S.-based developers should create applications which will help online Egyptian groups organize themselves. Mobile apps, new features to FB, Twitter, etc, data conforming algorithms. These are the most obvious.
Besides, online tools have already played a major role in the Egyptian drama, as they did to a lesser extent in the Iranian unrest against the ayatollahs. That is an historical fact. To assume online tools are a fad is as dangerous as battleship admirals thinking airplanes are a fad. The balance of probability is that online tools will play a bigger, not a smaller, prospective role. Far from being a fluke, the role of self-organization in Egypt may simply be a harbinger of things to come throughout the region.
And fortunately for America, this action is happening in the one place where the USA is still unquestionably the champion of the world; the one place where access to actual participants is possible, though on a distributed basis. If there is one single thing that the American political and developer community can do to affect the course, not only of the Egyptian revolution but of changes in the Third World to come, it will be to act in this sphere.
Wretchard, just a quibble: that's not the one place where America is still the unquestioned leader in the world, or "champion" of the world -- but, hey, that's just a quibble. I know what you were getting at. The whole world taps to this beat and the autocratic world is especially threatened by this American technological advance. Acting within this sphere seems practical, possible, hopeful. In fact, it's do-able.
Because it is so clearly capable of success, it is the path forward in autocratic societies all over the globe.
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