Monday May 21st 2012
Babbage
Science and technology
Wael Ghonim on Egypt's uprising
Revolution 2.0
Feb 7th 2012, 18:07 by The Economist online
WAEL GHONIM, a Google marketing executive, was imprisoned after helping co-ordinate the initial stages of the uprising in Egypt. We caught up with him in London to discuss the power of the internet and the progress made since Hosni Mubarak's fall
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In this blog, our correspondents report on the intersections between science, technology, culture and policy. The blog takes its name from Charles Babbage, a Victorian mathematician and engineer who designed a mechanical computer.
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Congratulations! So you guys used modern internet technology to get yourselves an Islamist parliament/regime that's promising to take Egypt back a few centuries. Your economy is in a mess; tourists are afraid of Egypt; the cotton industry is much worse; the word of words against the Peace Treaty are drummed up; Egypt's image has rapidly plummeted around the world; conditions of women are worse (not even their faces can be shown publicly on election ads); Egypt is looking more like a bigger version of Gaza under Hamas rule -- thanks to the Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood that you guys voted in. Good luck on a bleak post-Mubarak future you're building with your internet technology.
Building the future is a journey, and in that Journey there will be bumps and indeed even a few pot-holes, people will realize what is best for them as time goes by. Mr. Prime does not need to travel back far in history to see what Medieval European history had to dish out on the vassals of the state and the fiefdoms and serfs... let alone the control of the church on every aspect of human life (to the extent of who a person may sleep with and how many times! - The Economist Feb 11,The first sexual revolution
Pleasure principles
How morality became personal in 18th-century England Print edition).
Just because the means of communication is now the internet rather than serfs exchanging verbal messages as they trod the fields and revolting after centuries of oppression does not make Egypt any worse off - indeed we are on our journey and what our people choose they will learn to live with and will as any people strive for a better future for what they deem best for them - please let us plan our own future and live it.