wrong tool for the revolution

Fledgling Rebellion on Facebook Is Struck Down by Force in Egypt

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 18, 2008; A01

CAIRO -- At 1:49 a.m. in an Internet cafe only then quieting after Cairo's daily rumble, 27-year-old Ahmed Maher worked at a computer. He wore the same shirt he had had on for two days. The essentials of his life on the run lay splayed out next to his keyboard -- car keys, cigarettes, prepaid cellphone.

Maher pursed his lips, typing intently. His dream of a people's uprising organized on Facebook was beginning to slip through his scrabbling fingers.

Worries about the risks of political activism in Egypt were spilling onto his screen. It won't work, one man wrote. The government's already infiltrated us, wrote another. This is stupid, wrote a third.

Since late March, 74,000 people had registered on a Facebook page created and run by Maher and a few other young Egyptians, most of them newcomers to activism. Even some of Egypt's older, more disillusioned proponents of democracy had let themselves hope that a social networking Web site created by American college students could become an electronic rallying point for protest against President Hosni Mubarak's 27-year rule.

But the experience of the Facebook activists showed the limits of technology as a means of organizing dissent against a repressive government. Maher would end up among what rights groups said were 500 Egyptians arrested during two months of political activism in Egypt -- and find himself stripped and beaten in a Cairo police station, he said.

addictomatic

Addictomatic: hexayurt.

Addictomatic story: InfoToday.

where my jetpack is

I used to be like hell yeah, brother! where's my jetpack?! too... Angry about the future. Angry about the lack-of-future. Angry about the present?

But I kind of like Bruce Sterling's answer to that question... "Are you Chinese?".

Or, better, "you're not payin' fuckin' attention... you're all disillusioned and you're not actually looking at what's really happening."

Aside, Doktor Sleepless as a reaction or embodiment of this angst and disillusionment is worth reading.

extropianism as literary movement?

News to me, but it seems transhumanism is now considered to be a literary movement. Philosophy, yes. Political movement? ...could soon be. But artistic school?

Check Warren Ellis' wikipedia page:

Warren Ellis
Born	February 16, 1968 (1968-02-16) (age 40) Essex, England
Occupation	writer
Nationality	British
Genres	science fiction, superhero
Literary movement	Extropianism, Transhumanism
Notable work(s)	Transmetropolitan Planetary The Authority Nextwave Global Frequency
Notable award(s)	Eagle Award
Official website

Genre, I could see... but literary movement? Any artistes out there want to weigh in on this?