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The Iranian Election, Twitter, and Popular Movements

I've spent part of the morning following the Twitter dialog (Twitterlog?) about the Iranian elections and the ensuing protests (I'm following two threads: #Iranelection and #Tehran. Even with the media black-out, these postings are coming with amazing speed. It, literally, is impossible to keep up. Hundreds of posts per minute, perhaps thousands. With this, certainly, will be a huge amount of bad information, as well as deliberate mis-information. However, within this will be solid pieces of truth. Powerful, indeed. And here lies how this medium has changed the world. A totalitarian regime can't suppress this much information. Thousands of voices, reaching out instantly. Pretty much a game of whack-a-mole on the government's end. Sadly, those "moles" who get whacked with get it hard, I'm certain.

Besides Twitter, Flickr has an amazing stream of images, YouTube has videos, Digg is going crazy...so much, so very fast. Opposition now has a powerful, global tool. That, and a willingness to use it. The world has changed, indeed.
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