I read this article in the Times: “Cellphones Become the World’s Eyes and Ears on Protests [link] and got the following links:Storyful; Yfrog; Citizentube; Bambuser.
I hadn’t heard of any of them. American activists have been leapfrogged. The more I find out about what happened in Egypt and what’s happening now elsewhere, my questions have gone from, “What can we do to help?” to “What can we learn from them?”
Just as cell phones enabled third-world countries to skip the whole landline infrastructure spend, their activists have gone straight to new media tools. Meanwhile, we’re all too likely to receive our info from old, centralized sources like the NY Times, PBS, and the network evening-news programs.
So where are we? We’re behind. There were some comments on your blog and elsewhere around the blogosphere to the effect that the U. S. is primed and ready to be the next revolution. We’re nowhere near that. We’re at the beginning. There’s more work to be done here in the U. S. than abroad.
