This Is Why I Intensely Dislike, And Won't Participate On, Twitter

Some respond to Japan earthquake by pointing to global warming  From The Daily Caller.  Throwaway article about a Twitter fight from the idiot believers of Global Warming(Clarification:  I am not calling Global Warming out as idiocy.  The term "idiot believers" applies to followers of this, or any theory, who have based their beliefs on little to no actual knowledge.  This is not a comment for or against Global Warming.  Rather, Twitter is the subject, and the article is the jumping off point..).  Maybe they sought to connect the damage from the tsunami to rising sea levels, or some theoretical link that might takes pages to explain, or maybe they were just wrong:  Global Warming doesn't cause earthquakes.  We won't ever know their full motivation or comprehension of the concept and implications of what they post, as they've chosen a forum that limits them to 140 characters!  You cannot, Can NOT have any worthy, nuanced, multi-level, developed discussion regarding the merits of Global Warming, or any other complex issue, on Twitter.  It is, by design, impossible.

If you can encapsulate your thoughts into 140 characters at any given time;  I'm pretty much assured not to care what those thoughts might be.  They're trivial.  Dumb.  Ham-Handed.  They're blunt, inaccurately descriptive, under-developed, annihilated grammatically, shallow, one dimensional, or meant as comedy, which is the one exception.  Twitter promotes lazy thought and rewards short attention spans, which exacerbates the rampant lack of critical thought already contagion here in year 2011. 

It feels as if this trend of verbal acceleration and condensation has negatively effected our collective emotional response.  We are bored with what doesn't immediately grab our attention, or that that holds our attention too long.  We don't have to think; so we choose not to.  And we extend that courtesy to those around us.  We have chosen shallow and easy.  We'd prefer not to.  We want 140 characters as opposed to a full explanation.  Twitter is just the symptom. 

And that is why, ultimately, we are doomed.  Provided we don't rip apart, first..

Egypt: Having Trouble Visualizing The Connections And Influence Of The Internet On The Egyptian Revolution?

This should help.. And in the spirit of a connected 'Net, I found this from Xymphora, who found it on Mondoweiss, who linked to it from its creator, Kovas Boguta. Super fascinating. (Checking out his connectivity map is essential for understanding, so go there first!) Excerpts:
The map is arranged to place individuals near the individuals they influence, and factions near the factions they influence. The color is based on the language they tweet in..
..
(Wael Ghonim).. is prominently located near the bottom of the network, straddling two factions as well as two languages. The size of his node reflects his influence on the entire network.

The lump on the left is dominated by journalists, NGO and foreign policy types; it seems nearly grafted on, and goes through an intermediary buffer layer before making contact with the true Egyptian activists on the ground. However, this process of translation and aggregation is key; it is how those in Egypt are finally getting a voice in Western society, and an insurance policy against regime violence.
..
Some protesters only spoke Arabic but..others make an effort to be visible to the rest of the world on purpose. They want to reach out, and connect with, the rest of the global society.
..
In a case of ironic symbolism, the far left-most satellites are the Whitehouse, State Department, and Wael Ghonim's employer, Eric Schmidt, who is merely a speck on the map. (In other words, they had no idea what was happening on the street, and absolutely no influence on the unfolding events..)And that's probably how everyone in the rest of the network would like this future to look.

I'm doing a bit of paragraph reshuffling here, but a sentence from Boguta's opening statement is the perfect summation:
The Egyptians use of Twitter captures.. the freedom of expression and association that is possible in that medium, and which is representative of a new collective consciousness taking form.

Already, the data is being compiled and analyzed. What didn't work has been noted, and what worked is being modified to fit other country's specific circumstances. We have seen minor examples (in comparison) of the Internet's power of expression and organization, but what happened in Egypt has tapped that potential and shown the world, tangibly, the power of information, and the speed of which it can(and will)be disseminated and acted upon.

What we saw was not just the overthrow of an authoritarian regime or the creation of a new political dynamic in the Middle East, but the fledgling steps of that global collective consciousness and its burgeoning self awareness. Connectivity and expression doesn't rely on power, money, and influence. Mubarak's billions and iron fisted control couldn't put down the 'Net or keep him in power. Global thought just took a great leap forward, and while recent events are hugely important in what will be our documented History, the beginnings of the awareness of What Can Be began not only on the streets, but also on the servers, of Cairo.

Egypt: Is The Worm Indeed Turning?

Egypt set for mass protest as army rules out force Good news. Will that promise hold? Excerpts:

Egypt's army gave a powerful boost to the country's opposition last night by announcing that it would not use force to silence "legitimate" demands for democratic reforms in the Arab world's largest nation.

On the eve of a million-strong protest planned for today and amid multiplying signs that the US is moving steadily closer to ditching its long-standing ally, Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, now has few options left.
..
The military's statement, reported by the state-run Mena news agency, said: "The presence of the army in the streets is for your sake and to ensure your safety and wellbeing. The armed forces will not resort to use of force against our great people." It referred to the "legitimate demands of honourable citizens".

It was not clear whether the pledge not to use force was intended to draw the sting from protests or signal a weakening of support for the president, who relies heavily on the armed forces as the guarantor of the regime and its stability.
..
Obama met Middle East experts yesterday as his administration tried to find a path to a post-Mubarak era that continues to serve its interests, including ensuring that Egypt maintains its 30-year peace treaty with Israel. US hopes are solidifying around the reformist Mohamed ElBaradei, despite his difficult relationship with the US after he undermined Washington's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when he was head of the IAEA, and his criticism of Obama's failure to ask Mubarak to resign.
It's got to be eating the West's(and Israel's) lunch that, despite their earlier hesitations into denunciations, this uprising is still happening.

Tony Blair, envoy for the Middle East Quartet, stopped short of calling for Mubarak to step down: "Change will happen," he said. "You can't put the genie back in the bottle now." William Hague, the foreign secretary, said after meeting EU colleagues: "We are setting down what should happen [in Egypt] in terms of values, process and institutions, but not trying to dictate precise timetable of elections."

Analysts believe that a likely outcome of the crisis is that Mubarak will eventually be persuaded to stand down by his closest advisers, including the army top brass and Suleiman. The US has close links to the Egyptian military.

Google(!) and Twitter(ugh--!!)come down on the side of the people!

Egyptians gather for mass march to oust Mubarak Here's the most interesting portion, as it seems to represent a policy/momentum/perceptual shift:

The military, which has run Egypt since it toppled the monarchy in 1952, will be the key player in deciding who replaces him and some expect it to retain significant power while introducing enough reforms to defuse the protests.

"At this point Suleiman represents the army, not Mubarak,"said Fawaz Gerges at the London School of Economics.

Not all the army, though. Maybe the factions tied to Mubarak, but not all the Military. The Army is made up of poor Egyptians--the people. The new Vice President, Omar Suleiman, likes discipline. You think these people don't know that?

Our beloved Revolutionary Sweethearts: The Bangles

While We Looked Elsewhere, Egypt Decided To Stage A Revolution..

Cairo erupts as Egyptian protesters demand Mubarak resign. From Raw Story. Excerpts:

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Egypt Tuesday, facing down a massive police presence to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in protests inspired by Tunisia's popular uprising.

Gamal Mubarak, son of President Hosni Mubarak, had fled the country along with his family, according to the Adnkronos International news service.
..
Chanting "Down with Mubarak" -- in reference to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who has been in power for three decades -- they broke through several police cordons and began marching towards Tahrir Square, in scenes seldom witnessed in Egypt.

Others shouted "Tunisia is not better than Egypt" as the crowds began to swell.

A security official told AFP that at least 20,000 to 30,000 police had been mobilized in the center of the capital alone, and that the area housing the interior ministry had been sealed off.

And, as per the 21st century revolution suppression handbook, Twitter is down..(Same article)

The US-based microblogging service that allows people to use mobile phones to broadcast short text messages was out of service in Egypt on Tuesday, according to the herdict.org tracking website recommended by Twitter.

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment on what was causing the service outage in Egypt.

"Egypt is going wild and I'm not sure we'll really have a sense of it until the dust clears," Digital Democracy's Mark Belinsky told CNET. "Hard to say whether or not it's just getting overloaded though...(physically severing) Internet was done in Burma after a while but it usually leads to international uproar. What they generally do is slow down the signal to a crawl, as they did in Iran, which they can then say was infrastructure failure or any other made up excuse."

Cairo knows how to rock! Video here:
Man stand up to a bus/water cannon.
Protestors chasing police!

That was an active Day One. I wonder what tomorrow holds for both Egypt and the region?