It will be blogged and Twittered and Facebooked and MySpaced. It will be blackberried and iPhoned and texted on millions of devices. The difference between today and previous periods of uprising is that information can get out to many, many people in a very short period of time. Information about fraud, corruption, destruction, hypocrisy... On one scale that's what happened in 2008, when Obama organized the best grass roots campaign in modern history. The old playbook of swing state focused, TV ad, politics switched to blogs, facebook and myspace. Information was dispersed faster and events were organized with better efficiency and probably better accuracy than ever before. On a very different scale and a much more potentially dangerous yet also revolutionary one, the events in Iran over the past few days are ruled not by state propaganda or TV etc., but by the technology of Twitter and texting that's mobilizing thousands, hundreds of thousands, to non-violent protest and community organizing.
This is blog entry as much about Iran as it is about technology. But the two go hand in hand. There is no government legitimacy if folks on the street are getting real information in real time from the myriad sources available from Google, Bing, Ask etc. Some of it is accurate, some of it is not, but all of begs more and more questions about the state run media there and the stories the Government and the clerics are pushing.
I know it's early. This may all go away. Violence may erupt. It's a real pressure cooker there and it's likely to get hotter before things cool off. I hope it stays non-violent. I hope the ruling class there comes to its senses before senseless violence breaks out.
But no matter what this whole episode is running on the same energy that gave birth to dailykos, huffington post, realclearpolitics, politico, etc. etc.
The revolution will not be televised.