All Eyes on Libya

Countries, like people, in positions of power have enormous and nuanced responsibilities. When you see recurring evil and do nothing about it, you are nourishing a young and virile hatred that will grow with a new generation. And it will dedicate itself to the destruction of your institution.

Image credit: Al Jazeera.

The Butterfly that Turned the Tides

Now the sons are coming, the new generation, and they are saying, 'I don’t care that my father agreed with you — I am asking for more, and I am asking for something else.'

-Bahraini columnist Sawsan al-Shaer,
"Unrest Spreads, Some Violently, in Middle East," The New York Times

This is like when food fights started at school - by one person at outset, then the whole cafeteria got into it. Ironically enough, food has a lot to do with this: these are revolutions of people starved for morale and dignifying resources, while those responsible for oiling the machine throw parties and feed their dogs.

But it's also so much more than that!

This is what happens when you are able to compare yourself to people you can relate to, and find that, despite your similarities, your freedoms are incredibly lopsided. That kind of power once belonged only to wealthy meritocracies.

But because technology flows like water, penetrating those deep shadows in human society, making remote strangers feel so much closer than they are, so much more real and human, everyone has this capability. Everyone can see when they're being shafted by a rotting hegemony.

That is amazing, because the world is about to change faster than it ever has - huge ripples resonating across our fiber optic cables, ripping the chords that compose the white noise of our lives.

Pay attention to this dissonance in the frequency, even if it sounds faint, or you will miss something enormous: not a turning point for the Middle East, but a turning point for humanity to which we all contributed when we decided that 56k was too slow, that we wanted organic from Wal-Mart, that Nestlé and Cadbury had to stop using palm oil to make our candies, that Wikileaks deserved an audience, that we wanted to stop paying for out-of-state long distance, that, finally, we wanted our own communication channels, and we wanted to publish faster, and we needed to feel closer.

That's beautiful, isn't it?

'The battle for the soul of Egypt isn't over and done with.'

They know, like we all do, that this regime no longer cares to put on a moderate mask. That they have shown their true nature. That Mubarak will never step down, and that he would rather burn Egypt to the ground than even contemplate that possibility.

- "Egypt Right Now," Sandmonkey's first-hand account of what's happened in his country over the last 9 days ... and 30 years.

When you read this, take into account that there's no room left to behave as if human equality is a subjective thing. There is no more space in an increasingly connected world to say that what a tyrant, a tyrannous government or a tyrannous enterprise does with its dependents is its own business.

Faster communications makes territory less important and distances insignificant. That means institutionalised repression and blows to free thinking, to the liberty that sparks innovation, becomes everybody's business. The world is now too small for this.

I'm going to say something cheesy now, but I think it has to be said this way. Technology is where it is today because of higher numbers of ever more ambitious hackers fighting odds, rigid corporate standards, suspected limitations and attempted castrations of the internet's liberty. They are dogged, they self-organise and recognise no authority but the merits of what works, cutting away what doesn't, and we have all advanced because of it.

In this world and tomorrow's, that hacker culture belongs to everyone: people with access to the tools to fight governments, self-organise and speak out against human injustices without having to go through prescribed channels.

The channels that matter now belong to us. Use them wisely, tirelessly and fearlessly. United, able and armed with knowledge, we can make civilisation a kinder, more efficient machine, worthy of its name and richer because of the dynamism that serves one god: freedom. The freedom to think, be educated, feel safe, ask hard questions and decide our destinies.

This is what Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen and other countries, newly inflamed, are fighting for now. This is what we should be defending every day, even if we feel like it's not our fight.

It's always our fight.