three thoughts on egypt for 2/11/11

 

2-11-11 - Egyptian Democracy Day (image by Dr. Robert R. Cargill)

Here are three thoughts on Egypt for 2/11/11, the day Hosni Mubarak resigned the presidency:

1. 2/11 did what 9/11 couldn’t: it showed that nonviolent Arab dissent can defeat what militant Arab dissent desired: a nation ruled by autocratic force.
2. 2/11 used to be Islamic Revolution Day in Iran (here and here and here), establishing the present Islamic regime in Iran.
   Today, 2/11 becomes Democracy Day in Egypt.
3. Less than two months ago, Egyptian Coptic Christians were massacred in a New Year’s mass in Alexandria (here and here and here). Today, the Egyptian President, Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, is gone. It was only when the people of Egypt – both Muslim and Christian together – rallied in a secular, nonviolent protest, that the people of Egypt united as one to take back control of their country.

Follow the celebration at UCLA’s Hypercities Egypt Digital Humanities project.

ucla digital humanities twitter project preserves voices of egyptian protesters

UCLA Hypercities Egypt

A front page story by Jonathan Lloyd on the NBC Los Angeles website highlights a UCLA Digital Humanities project that is using Twitter to preserve the voices of the protesters in Egypt.

The Hypercities Egypt project streams Twitter updates and overlays them on a digital map of Cairo.

My UCLA DH colleague, Yoh Kowano, explains how it works in this video. He says:

“You just let the program run, and you almost feel like you’re there,” explained Yoh Kawano, a member of the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities program, who built the program’s interface. “It collects tweets live from Cairo and displays them in real time on a map.”

A story by UCLA’s Meg Sullivan offers more details:

Subtitled “Voices from Cairo through Social Media,” the program displays a new tweet every four seconds over a digital map of Egypt’s capital. Because it gathers tweets from those who have enabled Twitter’s “add location” function, the program also maps the precise location in Cairo from which they were sent. And the Twitter users’ avatars — often photos of the protesters themselves — accompany the poignant messages, providing a moving immediacy to the experience.

Visit the site here.