It’s no secret that the protests in Iran would be as hidden as the genocide still happening in Sudan if not for a free tool with a silly name: Twitter. As hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed a contested re-election victory in Iran, hundreds of thousands of people insisting that the election was rigged took to the streets. When the government tried to shut down internet access, the people took to their cell phones to broadcast the injustices.
Even with limited internet access beyond cell phones, You Tube was flooded with Iranian videos sharing the truth of what was happening. We are in a new era where transparency is rampantly exposing the secrets and dirty tricks of hierarchies.
The statistics of how support for Iranian democracy through the interwebs skyrocketed on June 17th revealed that we had hit a tipping point. The Los Angeles Times has declared Twitter to be ‘Tyranny’s New Nightmare.”
The 21st Century, social media and social networks have had their Tiananmen Square moment. The symbolism of Iranian’s tweeting and You Tubing what the government wanted to hide resembled the individual man who stood up the tanks in Tiananmen Square during their 1989 crackdown on democracy.
Old hard line systems are crashing faster and harder than ever as communication and 
relationships move faster on the interwebs. If the Onion Article, Twitter Creator on Iran: ‘I Never Intended For Twitter to be Useful,’ is true, then Twitter is a massive failure and it’s time to rebuild that wall in Berlin.
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Good article–I changed my avatar to an unappetizing shade of green as a microscopic show of support for the cause in Iran. I would have loved to see a much stronger response from our national leadership to back up all the rhetoric we heard in Berlin and beyond about “supporting the blogger in Iran”.
But even the hard liners exploited twitter to a certain extent, spreading disinformation and creating fear among the masses. The new technology is not always in the hands of the righteous. But overall I do find it fascinating when we as a society digest new technologies and thoughtfully consider the consequences of our actions. Just because it is new doesn’t make it good.
Marc
http://www.littmannweddings.blogspot.com