Egypt's Twitter Revolution Is Real and Radical and Revolutionary

“… the question became, well, do I have something I can do? And I realized, I know people. I know people who know people. And I can reach out to my circle of contacts, and try to start calling people’s numbers, and then create a Twitter feed, and then start feeding what they’re telling me into a Twitter feed.”

The project isn’t just stark proof of Twitter’s power, but a much-needed reminder that old tech like telephones can sometimes still be useful, at least in helping to make newer technology like Twitter work better. Google and Twitter are following him, and not just in that way: engineers from the two companies made peace over the weekend to collaborate on a similar system “that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard.”

Not only will Scott-Railton’s project help to continue to fuel revolution, but it will finally give us a “realistic portrait” of what’s happening in Egypt in a way that television never could.

Among the subscribers to his Twitter feed are reporters from every major news organization; the BBC, NPR, the LA Times, Al Jazeera and the Wall Street Journal have all asked him to comment on what’s really going on. “In years past, the idea was that you could only understand the situation if you were on the ground,” Sree Sreenivasan, a professor of digital media at the Columbia Journalism School told Time. “What we have learned though is that there is a real role for social media for people who are far away from the action to bring context, understanding and analysis.”

At last, the generous social impulse born of disruptive social media like Twitter is actually bringing lasting change to the Middle East. Here’s hoping that people in other repressive countries will be inspired to take a page out of the Egyptian Facebook, find a way to get on Twitter, and make it known to the world that they “Like” democracy and freedom and radically new kinds of revolutions.

If you care about keeping the revolution going, don’t forget to Tweet this article, at least before this pesky debate gets more complicated.