How would you handle losing digital connections?
People in Egypt have lost nearly every connection to the digital world. That includes e-mail, the Internet, social networking and mobile phones. The Egyptian government made this move to silence the masses after noisy public rioting and protests against its president, Hosni Mubarak.
While millions of Egyptians can no longer keep up with the latest developments via Twitter or Facebook, some still have been able to get photos, videos and accounts of the demonstrations and police and military response to the rest of the world. They're using dial-up connections and conventional modems to access the only Internet service provider still in operation in Egypt and their stories are being spread across the Web.
Here's a recent Twitter post by @EgyptFreedomNow:
www.twitter.com/egyptfreedomnow
"DIAL-UP ISP IS WORKING. DSL is still working #Egypt, Try their Dial up numbers (0777 7770),(0777 7000) SPREAD THE WORD #jan25 #jan28"
This is one of the many Twitter feeds that continue to provide updates from within Egypt. There are others, and I urge you to search for #Egypt on Twitter to keep up with happenings inside the country.
I know many Americans who rely on an Internet connection for business and personal communications. A drastic interruption of connectivity would not bring everything to a standstill, but a lot of scrambling would occur.
Could our country rely on dial-up connections? If it could, for how long?
I wouldn't want to have to find out. What’s your opinion? Please share it below.
Read a previous post about other news sources for the latest on the Egyptian conflict:
http://bit.ly/egyptweb
