Twittering in Farsi

I'm not going to reflect too long on the subject; millions out there in the blogosphere are already creating too much content to ingest anyway. I really just wanted to briefly talk about what the June 20th protest in Tehran, and more specifically the way in which media is disseminating information to the outside world, means to me.

I am thousands of miles away from Tehran though I am able to experience instantaneous reporting of primary sources from the protest there. This is the new world order, this is Web 2.0 and this is democracy. When traditional news outlets were banned blocked and exiled from the streets of Tehran, when corroborated information was not available, the Iranian people took to their cell phones, SMSing, using Twitter and posting photos and video from their cell phones online to show the world firsthand the rebirth of a new Iran. This moment in history is as significant as Tienanmen Square, the lunar landing and the Rodney King video. This is the melding of technology, new media and the unyielding human spirit. This is a moment when we can look back on in which nations, cultures and individuals connected without the proxy of a national government, a moment in which information truly became free and democratized, a moment in which the speech, sights and experiences of individuals in an oppressive county could seek refuge and sanctuary in the internet servers in another country thousands of miles away even when those individuals could not leave the barricades of Tehran.

One of the tweets that came out of the twitter feed, a famous quote, read "you can kill the revolutionary but you cannot kill the revolution." Information, knowledge and media are now free and unleashed: the world can now watch and experience simultaneously. This is a great moment in human history. They said that on September 11th we were all Americans. On Saturday June 20th, we were all Iranians.