tim horan

U.S. State Department speaks to Twitter over Iran

“We highlighted to them that this was an important form of communication,” said a State Department official of the conversation the department had with Twitter officials.

Any sign of U.S. involvement in the actions of Twitter or any other social networking service could be seized on by Iran as U.S. interference in the electoral process.

First is the diffusion of technology. The Internet, blogs, YouTube and text messaging via cellphones, particularly among the young — 70 percent of Iranians are under 30 — is giving Middle Easterners cheap tools to communicate horizontally, to mobilize politically and to criticize their leaders acerbically, outside of state control. It is also enabling them to monitor vote-rigging by posting observers with cellphone cameras.

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Tom Friedman, NYTimes - Winds of Change?, 6/14/09 

On this, Friedman is dead on.  I’ve long believed that mass distribution of technology, specifically the open broadband Internet, is the key to helping alleviate the geopolitical divisions that so plague us today.

In the Muslim world especially, which is controlled by limiting access to information, the Internet is the antidote.

When people of any race, color or creed have unfettered access to information and communication tools, all is possible.  Forgive me while I channel @howardlindzon here for a moment, but I’ve often joked that if you give the third-world broadband plus unlimited porn, the walls will quickly come down.

The Internet democratizes access and information, and it does so internally and externally.  Case in point: the coverage of Iran’s election.  The press and the people are exposing internal divisions in Iran to the world that would otherwise never see the light of day.

For my money, I’d wire the whole third-world before I ever contemplated bombing any of it.

(via mokoyfman)

That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.

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I hope he’s right about this

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

(via fred-wilson)

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-6-14)

1. Hank Williams (21)
2. Oliver Mtukudzi (10)
3. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (7)
4. U2 (7)
5. Johnny Cash (7)