My Response to “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” By Nicholas Carr

First of all, I would like to say that the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr reminded me of a lecture by Mr. Wael El Fakhrany, Regional Manager of Google in Middle East and North Africa, that I attended earlier at AUC. Most of the facts, information and testimonials that were mentioned in the article were fairly similar to the ones that were presented by Mr. Wael El Fakhrany in his lecture. In addition to providing us with a quick overview about Google’s early history and achievements, Mr. El Fakhrany gave us insight into how search results are being organized sequentially and how ads appear and are precisely sorted on the search results as well. He provided us with some astonishing figures and forecasts for the internet-usage patterns worldwide in the year 2020. Also, this phenomenon of skimming online information was typically specified in the lecture where Mr. El Fakhrany assured us that our reading habits have typically changed as well as our brains’ adaptation to traditional reading in general.

Moreover, I was really happy to find out in the article such concept of the Plasticity of the Brain which I studied one month ago in my psychology course specifically within the article of Habit by the famous psychologist William James. According to James, “habits are due to the plasticity of materials to outward agents,” so “the brain-matter is plastic.” Actually, what James wrote in his article about the plasticity of the brain to outward stimulus can certainly explain our over-reliance on surfing the internet which has become a crucial part of everyone’s life and even, in some cases, more important than reading a book. The article also brought up to my mind some memories of my early study years at AUC when I and my colleagues were passionate about going to the library and searching through the different books to find the relevant ones to use for our papers of the Rhetoric & Composition courses. Nevertheless, as soon as we took the LALT 101 or the library course which gave us the easiest way to make a research paper, I became less concerned about going to the AUC library and acquiring a lot of information from its valuable books. This library course taught me how to use the different online data bases like EBSCHost or Academic Search Complete and Jstor which really assisted me whenever I wanted to do a research paper for specific courses especially the sociology and anthropology ones. Not only that but through this library course, I have also learnt to use a program called Refworks which was all about doing the proper citations for whatever articles you choose to write about or include in your research paper.  I definitely learned a lot from this library course which was a pass or fail course with ZERO credit hours. However, after taking it, I minimally relied on other sources of information like books.

Regarding the scatter of attention and diffusion of concentration, I can assure you that this happens to me several times as whenever I am reading an article that was assigned to me by one of my professors; I get distracted by an email notification, a comment on Facebook, or a new tweet on Twitter. I often get distracted by an ad that is placed on one of the online news papers’ websites like USA Today, a thing that was mentioned in the article as well. This ad can possibly make me thing of something that would make me stop reading the article and google (as a verb) whatever was mentioned or appeared in the ad. Furthermore, with respect to cognition, I agree with Nicholas Carr that the internet has a fundamental effect on one’s cognition especially on the cognitive patterns of thought and reasoning. This is somehow similar to the use of calculators in particular among the young generations who became accustomed to making the simple mathematical calculations on the calculator instead of relying on their own brains. Personally, regardless of how terrible I am in mathematics, I can resort to the calculator to solve (7×9) instead of using my brain to solve it. This happened because I used the calculator since I was at grade 5 so, psychologically speaking; I became adapted to it even unconsciously. For some reason, this article about Google did remind me of the article “Machine Minds” by Michael Vassar especially when it was mentioned in the Google article that in this digital age, we think of our brains as “operating like computers.” Similarly, by the time I was reading the Google article by Nicholas Carr, I thought of the “Mind vs. Machine” article which we talked about earlier in the Digital Rhetoric course as it also referred to the famous British mathematician Alan Turing.

I think the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is very informative and interesting as it included relevant information about the topic of the internet’s influence on one’s cognition, and brain functions and adaptations. I liked the most in this article that the writer, Nicholas Carr, combined both rhetorical and psychological analysis of the issue of internet influence on human brain. Additionally, the article referred to the evolution of our reading, writing and even thinking habits in such an organized manner.

Here’s the trailer of Artificial Intelligence movie:

Ossama Bin Laden, Facebook & Twitter

When the United States announced lately that the U.S troops in Afghanistan have successfully captured Ossama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda leader, and even killed him after that, all TV networks and radio stations rushed to make use of such announcement and even add to it some credible news and facts about this mysterious person that would make people more knowledgeable about him. Actually, it was expected that the various TV networks and radio stations worldwide would be interested in such matter. Nevertheless, it wasn’t expected that Ossama Bin Laden’s death would be of interest to the ordinary people mainly the internet users who spend most of their time on popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. After the CNN announced Ossama Bin Laden’s death and even aired some videos of the place where he was hidden and captured later by the U.S soldiers, I found too many statuses briefly discussing the whole issue of his death. In fact, some people wrote in their statuses that Ossama Bin Laden’s death is a real victory and that there would be no more terrorist attacks in the world. I believe those people are the optimistic ones who want a better future and no more troubling thoughts about further terrorist attempts worldwide. They felt truly happy especially after it was mentioned by the U.S officials that while searching in the place where Bin Laden was captured, the U.S soldiers were able to find out some CDs and flash memories that would certainly consist of important information and data about Al Qaeda. Among those who believed that he truly died, there were some people who declared on both Facebook and Twitter that Ossama Bin Laden died long time ago but the United Stated preferred to announce that later specifically by the time of President Obama’s presidential re-election campaign which is approaching. On the other hand, others mentioned clearly on Facebook that they don’t believe that Ossama Bin Laden has died. One of my friends wrote in her status: “do you guys believe that Ossama Bin Laden really died? …… I bet he’s still alive.” Personally, I think that Ossama Bin Laden has died as I saw his daughter on CNN two days ago assuring her father’s death despite what some of Al Qaeda figures are persistently saying about the inaccuracy of such news of their leader’s death. Nevertheless, others preferred to stay neutral and managed only to encourage people to stop making speculations about Al Qaeda leader’s death and other issues as well. I have a friend who wrote in her status: “dear FB Friends, you can’t find out who saw your profile. You won’t see what you’ll look like in the future. You won’t know what that man saw when he walked in on his daughter. There are no free IPads. You can’t watch an accident at Alton Towers and you can’t see the video of Osama Bin Laden’s death… Not on Facebook. Stop clicking the spam links and videos besides exposing yourself and friends to virus risks.” Furthermore, I had a look at some funny groups and pages on Facebook which basically discussed that issue of Ossama Bin Laden’s death in a humorous way. Also, a page called “Osama Bin Laden is DEAD” had almost 200,000 likes within hours of President Barack Obama announcing the news of Bin Laden’s death on television. Similarly, on Twitter, even before President Barack Obama’s confirmation of Ossama Bin Laden’s death, a Twitter account called @GhostOsama had about 10,000 followers where this account mainly mentioned daily updates besides some funny jokes about the whole issue. It is worth mentioning that some of Twitter users linked Bin Laden’s assassination to the recent iPhone tracking application while others mentioned that a dog was the main reason behind his death since it showed the U.S troops the place where Al Qaeda leader was hidden.

Page of “Ossama Bin Laden is DEAD” on Facebook:

 Here’s President Obama’s announcement:

Another Video about Ossama Bin Laden:

The Royal Wedding and Social Media

I woke up to find out that today is the Royal Wedding where Prince William and Kate Middleton or the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are getting married as their marriage ceremony was covered worldwide by several TV channels like CNN and MBC4. Not only that, but also the marriage ceremony was followed up by several internet users on social media like Facebook and Twitter. Honestly, I was watching the ceremony on MBC4 and at the same time following up what the people were saying about it on Facebook and Twitter. During the wedding, on Facebook specifically, my friends were saying that the wedding is amazing and that William and Kate are admirable and cute. Also, some of the Facebook statuses referred to the dress of Kate that I personally think was very simple and pretty. Others mentioned some generic statuses like “here comes the Royal bride” and “it’s a happy Royal Wedding day.” My status was “couple of hours ago, the whole world was waiting for the Royal Wedding and now it’s waiting for the royal kiss” which is really funny as by the time William and Kate arrived at the Buckingham Palace, people worldwide were waiting for them to appear from the palace’s balcony where William would be kissing his bride. In general, most of the statuses I read were really happy with the wedding and passionate about it (I know some people who were waiting for it since the beginning of April, including me). Nevertheless, few people did mention in their statuses that the wedding is somehow overrated here in Egypt while wondering why people are loving it so much specifically girls who wrote nothing on their statuses but something about the Royal Wedding. On Facebook, some pages like Martha Stewart Weddings and others were encouraging people to interact with them especially via their Twitter accounts. Moreover, Bloggers on Twitter were rushing to share their opinions and tweets with others besides even having those updates by CNN & New York Times on Twitter before, during and after the Royal Wedding. It was interesting to find out that Veraggio Engagement Rings and Wedding Bands fan page on Facebook was holding a sweepstake so as to give the opportunity to one of those who will sign up for the sweepstake to win an engagement ring. This page actually announced for this sweepstake by saying that Kate Middleton isn’t the only one to receive a ring today because a lucky person may have one on this lucky day as well. On the other hand, other pages were congratulating William and Katherine while asking people: what did you think of the Royal Wedding? would you want your wedding to be televised and watched by billions around the world? I found those questions very nice and worth answering because they interactively engaged people in pleasant and happy discussions aside from those daily discussions that are political in nature and mostly about bloody revolutions and wars.

Let me tell you that after the Royal Wedding ended, I found some funny statuses and pages on Facebook that are of course about the wedding and really show how Egyptian girls were affected by the wedding. One of those unexpected statuses was “Girls: Dear future husband, watch the royal wedding and take notes, Guys REPLY: Dear future wife, watch the royal wedding and keep dreaming.” Additionally, I found a page under the name of “we are all Kate Middleton” which have this humorous picture of thousands of brides running after a man where all of them want to get married to this man. I think this page was created due to the prevalent marriage crisis in Egypt where women are outnumbering men and at the same time a large percentage of men are unemployed and can’t have enough money to marry. Also, after the ceremony, many of my friends on Facebook changed their profile pictures with a picture from the Royal Wedding, a thing that certainly show how people especially girls were emotionally affected by this ceremony. Similarly, after the ceremony on Twitter, people were still tweeting about the elegance of the bride and groom where most of the tweets were still about Princess Kate’s dress and hair style. Other tweets for instance were about the food that was to be served at the lunchtime reception at the palace where others included some speculations about the number and names of the guests who are going to be in this prominent reception. However, few tweets were pointing out to the economic burden of this wedding on Britain and its economy especially that it was declared that the wedding cost was £5billion. I believe that despite of what was mentioned about the cost of the wedding, people were still happy for Prince William and Princess Kate as this was evident from the large crowd of people who were surrounding the palace and cheering happily for the bride and groom. Anyways, I enjoyed watching this wedding ceremony on TV while keeping track of what’s mentioned on the social media about it.

 Here’s a short video about the Royal Wedding:

Internet, Twitter & Personality

Although I am terribly sick, I decided to write this blog post to reflect on some of the articles, videos and even charts that got my attention throughout this entire week. First of all, let me start with this article “How Twitter Could Unleash World Peace” which mainly regarded Twitter as the ultimate solution for one’s problems that are related to self-acceptance and expression of personal views. Also, the article pointed out to a recent paper called “The Media Landscape in Twitter” that was written by a team of researchers from University of Cambridge, Korea’s Graduate School of Cultural Technology and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. Those researchers were able to come out with some conclusions which I think could have been surprising if this paper was published just before the revolutions that are taking place currently in the Arab World. The first conclusion is that most Twitter users are political users or activists where the paper revealed that over half of all Twitter users studied showed a distinct political bias in the media outlets and individuals they followed. Then the other conclusions are about Twitter’s secondary and tertiary benefits, people outweighing brands on Twitter and active users’ access to a wide range of views on Twitter. This paper actually reminded me of the sociology course that I took earlier at AUC where I was supposed to conduct a survey to examine the publishing trends of AUCians on Twitter. I was able to derive from this survey the AUCians’ biasness towards following political figures on Twitter like Wael Ghoneim, El Baradei, Amr Moussa and even Barack Obama. Similarly, I do follow the same political figures on Twitter where I usually get their daily updates and events before being announced on television or radio. With respect to Twitter, I did read another short article called “100 Geeks You Should be Following on Twitter” on Businessweek magazine where this article listed the names of popular Twitter users who are essentially providing entertaining tweets. While getting through this list, I noticed that most of those people are bloggers and writers who are willing to be well-known among users of the internet community. Nevertheless, others on this list are also creative gamers, artists, astronomers and even LEGO builders.

It is worth mentioning that a new book under the name of “Tweets from Tahrir” by Alex Nunns and Nadia Idle was published right after the Egyptian Revolution of 25^th of January. This book brings together a selection of key tweets in a compelling, fast-paced narrative, allowing the story of the revolution to be told directly by the people in Tahrir Square. Those key tweets belong to young activists who documented on their mobile phones every stage of the uprising. I really can’t wait to read the book and see if it typically describes the revolution as it happened or not.

Last Sunday, I saw this inspiring video about a lady who lost almost 500 pounds after staying in her apartment for 12 years where she did not interact or talk to anybody except her son. Interviewed by Diane Sawyer, the woman Nancy Makin declared that she was about to die before actually having a computer that was given to her by her sister who encouraged Nancy to participate in some chat rooms and share her political thoughts with strangers. Luckily, she found many strangers responding favorably to her political ideas and conversations and not on her appearance as mentioned in the video. Accordingly, through the internet and chat rooms, she found herself discovering a real value for her life and decided to change her appearance for the sake of publicly sharing her views with people who helped her regain self-confidence and acceptance as well. So as you can see, the internet has radically transformed this person’s life to the better and helped her out. I think we should never underestimate the value of the internet anymore.

I had a look at an interesting flow chart that was available at another Businessweek article called “Ask a Flow Chart: Should I delete my tweet?” I think this flow chart’s idea is based on this reluctance that some of us might have while putting a certain tweet on Twitter especially if it is about someone who might see this and act in an unpleasant way like one’s boss for example. This chart is mainly composed of simple questions that might confront a person while putting a certain tweet where he/she attempts to reconsider publishing it or even deleting it forever for the sake of preventing any problems. Have a look at this flow chart:

 

 Here are other images and charts about Twitter by Business Insider & others:

 

 

 

Immortality of Personal Online Information & Internet Privacy Issues

I was reading an article in the New York Times about how to fix (or kill) personal online data when I came across this testimonial by the chief executive of a company called reputation.com which mainly manages people’s online information and images. In the article, this chief executive called Michael Fertik said that “the online aggregation of personal data is setting the stage for a Wikileaks for your life.” This testimonial made me really surprised because I have never thought of being harmed simply because I share many aspects of my personal life on popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter especially when he added that such leaks of private data can be personally devastating. Although this is more likely to happen in the United States, the article referred to some potential harms of sharing personal data online. For example, it was mentioned that sharing one’s political views, health challenges and office troubles on Facebook for instance could possibly affect his/her admission to school, insurance coverage, acquiring loans or even getting or keeping a job. I think this could not happen in Egypt or Middle Eastern countries at least at the mean time because there is a minimal awareness of the technological advancements and internet advantages in such countries. Moreover, I don’t think that these institutions like schools, universities, insurance companies, banks and corporations in those countries would really care about going after the private information and status each and every one of its stakeholders on the internet. Nevertheless, it was interesting to know that there is a book called “Radically Transparent” that was written by Andy Beal who, as a former internet consultant, precisely specified how he helped people to have their personal information removed from the web permanently. I am actually thinking of buying this book in order to gain a holistic view about how this consultant successfully removed online personal data permanently. The article outlined some of the basic steps to try to manage personal privacy where the first step is searching one’s name, address, phone numbers and other information on popular search engines like Google and Yahoo and seeing the search results. Then most probably, a person could find some of those aspects publicly shared online maybe after the first few pages of the search results. I found further parts in the article very helpful specifically this part that talked about the multiple online accounts that we open and never use again. The article specified that these accounts can be partially threatful especially if they are created on websites that have changed their privacy procedures or have been acquired by new companies that typically have different privacy policies. After reading this, I thought of my old accounts on Hi5, My Space, Facebook, Skype and Hotmail that I am not using anymore and wondered if the private information and photos on these accounts are shared online or not. Also, I had this question in mind: what is the guarantee that if I closed these accounts my information will not be available online anymore? I think we never know what the situation will be like unless we have and subscribe with companies like reputation.com to be able to track our online information.

 

In fact, Facebook is one of the websites that have been heavily criticized for revealing more information about its users without their own consent. I recall that article that I read on Businessweek magazine earlier which said that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg declared privacy as a custom option and not a standard feature since January, 2010. I think this meant that some people became comfortable with sharing information more openly among many people while others preferred to share the same kind of information but among their friends only, and this why privacy on Facebook is a custom option and not a standard one. Zuckerberg also said lately that Facebook profiles should be public by default. Consequently, Germany has been working hard to ban Facebook in order to prevent employers from vetting their potential employees. Furthermore, the Federal Trade Commission is currently proposing a “do not track” button so as to regulate online privacy on popular websites like Facebook and Twitter. But here’s a question: are these efforts enough to prevent sharing private information online? Personally, I think that, despite all these efforts, Facebook is still perceived as the most efficient method of personal public display. It is worth mentioning that Facebook is making use of some of the private information of its users and is providing such information to advertisers to help them out in spreading awareness about their products and services. I took in my branding course at AUC that users on Facebook write about their own interests and preferences on their profiles where Facebook makes advertisers know about these interests to reach their target customers and provide them with advertisements that stimulate their buying habits accordingly. Economically speaking, Facebook gets a lot of money out of this process from advertisers so according to the Facebook administration, giving out private information about users to advertisers is worth it. Similarly, I receive thousands of emails and phone calls regularly that are all about new products and services or even events as when I get to ask those who call me about how they got my phone number, they either prefer not to say or proudly say that they got it from AUC or from Vodafone, my mobile company or even from online subscriptions and purchases. In my own point of view, I believe that giving someone’s private information whether offline or online is really unethical because it is a partial deception to this person who has trusted the source and provided his/her full information to it without any security or privacy concern involved.

 

Here’s a link to the New York Times Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/technology/personaltech/14basics.html?_r=1&ref=technology

 

Here’s an interesting Video about Facebook Privacy:

Wikileaks & Amn El Dawla Leaks

When I first heard about Wikileaks, I was very curious about going in-depth and knowing what Wikileaks is all about. After reading some newspaper and magazine articles that talked broadly about Wikileaks, I was really surprised from this extensive leaking of some of the private information and documents that belonged to the United States especially those documents that were released earlier about the U.S Army’s field operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, I wondered how this man Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was courageous enough to release such critical secret documents to the public without having any fears from the U.S government which surely was not happy with him releasing those documents openly. I had those questions in mind: why did he do that? is it because he wanted the world to know about the false supremacy of the United States or he did this for the sake of becoming popular for example? and is he ready to face all sorts of problems he might face during and after publishing such critical documents? It is worth noting that on the 1^st of September, 2010, Sweden reopened a sex-abuse investigation against Assange; however, he said that these false allegations are part of a smear campaign by his opponents and enemies.  I once read an article that referred to a quote by Julian Assange as he believed that “leaking is inherently an anti-authoritarian act. It is inherently an anarchist act. We get information on the mail, vet it like regular news information, release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks.” I think that the reason behind Wikileaks becoming very popular among people is those mysterious factual posts that are published frequently on the website and are not only related to the United States but are also related to other countries as well. Let me provide you with some examples: Wikileaks has published a video in 2010 showing a 2007 incident in Baghdad in which a U.S military helicopter fired upon and killed a group of innocent civilians, including two Reuters journalists. Moreover, Wikileaks has proudly released what it called “Afghanistan War Logs” which were more than 75,000 U.S military documents related to the conflict between the United States and Afghanistan. Accordingly, the United States’ prominent military figures and others believed that Wikileaks informants should be executed and that Wikileaks should be put on the official U.S list of terrorist organizations, and not only that as the U.S government arrested PFC Bradley Manning and basically charged him with leaking specific documents and information to Wikileaks. Here’s a question: will Wikileaks under the supervision of Julian Assange after all this continue to publish and release further documents or it will stop this to avoid any upcoming troubles? Personally, I think that at some point, Julian Assange will stop releasing any kind of documents as the United States will not allow him anymore to continue what he has started earlier because according to the U.S National Security Advisor General James Jones, “Wikileaks could put the lives of Americans and the U.S partners at risk,” but let’s wait and see what is really going to happen later.

I have read an article earlier in Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine that was called “Wikileaks May Have exploited Music, Photo Networks to Get Data” where this article mainly talked about a startling detail that Wikileaks used music and photo-sharing networks like LimeWire and Kazaa to acquire and release classified documents, according to a computer security firm. This company called Tiversa Inc. has done exploratory searches on behalf of the U.S agencies including the FBI where it declared that WikiLeaks, which has said previously said that it doesn’t know who does provide it with information, gets those secret documents itself through the so-called peer-to-peer networks. Moreover, the company succeeded in discovering some computers in Sweden, where it found that Wikileaks based its most important servers, that had access to some hard drives through such popular networks. On the other hand, Wikileaks’ London attorney argued that this company’s claims are false by pointing out to the company’s failure to declare the names of the clients who were involved when it noticed these Swedish downloads. Actually, I believe to some extent that what Tiversa Inc. is saying is true and more likely to happen because there is no other source that Wikileaks might resort to other than those music and photo-sharing networks. 

Similarly, you may not have heard about the Egyptian version of leaking information Amn El Dawla Leaks, a Facebook page that was a typical replication of the idea of Wikileaks. In fact, some Egyptians who were really enthusiastic about attacking the police offices, stations and main buildings to obtain any kind of documents created a Facebook page to show to the world how oppressive and tyrant the Egyptian police was just before the 25^th of January Revolution. I believe that this page was collectively done where most of those people collaborated to provide as many documents as possible and it was proven to be successful since it has more than 20,000 people. This page did release many documents that we were all shocked when we looked at where there is this document that has the signature of the ex-minister of interior affairs Habib El Adly, who is currently in prison, on that decision that the policemen will go and shot all the people who are doing protests in Tahrir Square, a thing that means that he is approving the decision. This decision actually resulted in the death of almost 400 people in Tahrir Square on the 28^th of January, 2011. By the time this page appeared on Facebook, I remember one of my friends writing in her status “Amn El Dawla Leaks are very entertaining” while others were angry from what they have saw on such page and wanted all the corrupt people to be arrested immediately. It is worth noting that after releasing those documents on the page, those people who got the documents gathered all of them and headed to the office of the Prime Minister in order to hand them to him and let him investigate the acts of tyranny, oppression and corruption that were taking place by the policemen in the country.

Finally, I think that Wikileaks and even Amn El Dawla leaks are good sources of information and they are not bad or misleading as some people would say. Also, if Wikileaks did not stop what it is doing or is not stopped, maybe we will be having other websites like Wikileaks in the near future.

Here’s a link for a short video by CNN that nicely talks about Wikileaks:

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/12/22/101.wikileaks.revealed.cnn

On Facebook, Democracy & Happiness

Actually, no one nowadays can undermine the influential role of social networks like Facebook and Twitter in getting people of different backgrounds, interests, professions and countries to talk openly and criticize anyone or anything after long periods of silence, tyranny and oppression. This has pushed many governments worldwide to tolerate all what their citizens are calling for which fall under one bulky concept called DEMOCRACY. Both Facebook and Twitter or what I would refer to as the US-based technology fascinated so many people to the extent of letting them think of other uses of such technology other than the normal day-to-day social interaction. These social networks opened a clear path for democracy that was full of obstacles and sacrifices but yet it was worth moving in this path at least for the sake of gaining experience and wondering about the reasons that made us fail in the first place. In my earlier blog posts, I have talked about Egypt and its continuous struggle for democracy where the Egyptians sought different methods of communication to reach democracy but none of those methods really helped until they realized the importance of online social media. But now I am referring to all the countries like Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and others who are also striving for democracy and freedom from their undemocratic governments, and are seeking Facebook and Twitter for the same political uses that their brothers and sisters used earlier in Tunisia and Egypt. If you went over any newspaper or any program in television recently, you will certainly find many voices saying all sorts of things that can together be united into a single message that says: that we are the protesters, we will not go away and we demand a government by the people and for the people. This message was agreed upon by people through Facebook and Twitter and after having this consensus, those people went happily to their countries’ streets saying it out loud with no fear. But let me share these questions with you: was this US-based technology intended for such political practices or those protesters have created their own way of using such technology? and is the United States happy with its technological inventions which brought up massive political uprising in the Arab World or not? I think that definitely this phenomenon of online activism that has emerged lately with social networks has sparked the political activity on Facebook and other social networking websites. In my own point of view, the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt were real opportunities for considering the democratic process and engaging more people in politics as a whole. In both countries, there was a substantial avoidance to the national media’s (whether the national television or newspapers) continuous attempts to shape the political information and actions of people and that is why those people really made it through Facebook and Twitter where they organized successful protests that made them not really protesting, but much closer to governing their own countries. I feel really proud of these young tech-savvy Facebook and Twitter users who worked together in a virtual civil society to make change in their governments that were apparently undemocratic ones. It is worth noting that the Egyptian government and military have created two pages under their official names on the Facebook to reach the vast majority of people online and to update them of what is really happening at the meantime in Egypt as this idea was proven to be successful and is a serious acknowledgement by those currently taking charge in the country that the Facebook is as important as the national television/newspapers. Let me talk about the constitutional elections in Egypt that happened two weeks ago and were definitely considered part of a democratic experience that Egypt has been longing for long time ago. In fact, Egyptians were motivated by their Facebook and Twitter friends to vote in the elections no matter it is by saying yes or no to the Egyptian constitutional changes as a large portion of these online users went to vote for the sake of marking their initial democratic steps towards a better democratic country. I can see this transformation in many Arab countries where people have changed from passive or even receptive audiences to active ones who are able to draw attention to some critical issues whether political, social or economic issues and have others think openly and practically with them. So we can conclude that Facebook and Twitter are aiding us towards a better future but would this stay for too long or something would happen to stop them from helping us? or, in other words, can Facebook and Twitter sustain our democracy? I will try to be optimistic and I will continue to believe that those websites will be positively contributing to us and helping our beloved countries to get rid of the undemocratic spirit that was dominant for so long in them. Nevertheless, an organized citizen engagement and effective dialogue are needed along with the online social media to sustain our democracy and preserve our freedom.

Furthermore, did you ever think of any link between Facebook and your own personal happiness in life? I think that there is a strong link between this social network and our own happiness. Let me bring it this way…..if you saw a picture of you and your friends looking happy wouldn’t that make you happy or at least make your remember a happy moment that you have had with your friends? Similarly, Facebook has brought happiness to the majority of the Tunisians and Egyptians, and even made them celebrate their democratic pledge. I heard once that Facebook has participated in a Happiness Study to monitor the happiness and the moods of users but I am not sure about the measures that Facebook has used in implementing such study. Personally, I feel really happy when I see one of these updates by the political opposition groups on Facebook that declare the imprisonment of one of the figures of the previous corrupt regime in Egypt. For example, I felt extremely happy two days ago when I saw that update about the further imprisonment of Ahmed Ezz who is a corrupt businessman in Egypt.

Finally, I would say that Facebook always reminds me of that movie called “Inception” which mainly has this idea that in a world where technology exists, a single idea within one’s mind can be the most dangerous weapon or the most valuable asset that can potentially transform the world. I think that Facebook is a typical representation of this idea that was in Mark Zuckerberg’s mind, and was being presented to people and truly transformed the world.

Here’s an excerpt of an interview by ABC Channel with Mark Zuckerberg who talks about giving people the power of democracy through Facebook:

If you are interested in politics and the emerging online media, please read this article called Politics and Emerging Media: The Revenge of Publicity:

http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/0801/inaugural_barney.pdf