Links: Egyptians were Unplugged and Uncowed

It is three days later — January 28, 2011 — the day the Internet dead, or more precisely, was put to sleep by Mubarak.

That was when some of them discovered a couple of truth but Polar compatible. One, the roads still had the power to act as Twitter has been disconnected. And two, the Internet had become so integral to the company that it was unreasonable to consider a constitutional guarantee of free access to it.

"It felt like going back in time, but in today's world," Ahmed Gabr, a student of medicine and the Swalif.net technology blog editor, wrote in an e-mail.

Mr. Gabr including its detailed chronology of breaks in communication services during protests: when the service to Facebook and Twitter became first spotty, when SMS was stopped.

Its description for 28 January: "Egypt is now officially online."

In interviews by phone and e-mail young Egyptians as Mr. Gabr — tech-savvy but not necessarily political — were hardly Internet utopians. Firsthand had, after all, given how to shut down the Internet failed to stop the momentum of the protests. But they have a case that the Internet was an irreplaceable part of Egyptian life, especially for young people. Nothing more and nothing less.

Removing the Internet from their Government, they said, was a reminder that were not free; not really part of the rest of the world that they know so well, thanks to technologies like the Web.

"Frankly, I do not participate in the January 25, protests, but the blocking of Web sites and communications blackout on 28 January was one of the main reasons I and many others, were pushed to the streets," wrote Ramez Mohamed, a master's degree in sciences 26-year-old computer that works in the telecommunications sector.

"It was the first time for me to hear digitally disabled", he wrote. "Imagine sitting at home, not having any single connection with the outside world. I made the decision, ' this is nonsense, we are not sheep in their herd, ' I went and joined the protests. "

For Mr. Mohamed, as Mr. Gabr, it was like stepping back in time. "During the five days the Internet blackout, Tahrir square, I was almost every day," he recalled, referring to the hive of the protests in Cairo. "Tell you what, I shall not want Twitter, I can safely say that Tahrir was via Twitter. Almost all sharing in a political debate, trying to announce something or move news, even if they are just rumors, "retweets.

Laughing as what is old is new again, Mr. Mohamed ended this step with a facial smilely icon.The idea that the Egyptian Government could simply turn off the Internet (something Libya now has periodically) was a shock to outsiders — even a bit of a technical implementation. And the decision to do so runs against the grain of what had been the relatively open government policy towards the Internet, said Andrew Bossone, who has spent the last five years insured Cairo on technology.

"When I went in Tunisia, about a year ago, could get on YouTube or Al Jazeera," Mr. Bossone said in an interview from Beirut, where he currently lives. "Egypt really does not block any websites".

The policy had aroused expectations, said: "it's not just Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. This is access to this technology that has everyone else. A sense of entitlement. The idea that everyone else has, why can't I do that? "

Maybe that sense of entitlement is behind discussions that Mr. Gabr reported hearing. "Some friends are now demanding, jokingly or seriously," he wrote, "that a Constitution should emphasize new or edited on a" right of access to the Internet for all "non-negotiable."

This comfort with a relatively free-flowing Internet was on display in 2008, when it held the annual convention in Alessandria, Wikipedia at the library of high-tech new built near where she was the fabled library of Alexandria.

Filled with much of the technical class of Egypt, which included many women, the collection has been billed as an effort to support Wikipedia Arabic. The relatively low number of articles do not accurately reflects the importance of technology in the Arab world, the thinking went. Many Egyptians had an active presence, even Facebook, lively, and attempts to organize protests at the site of bloggers who were persecuted by the Government.

Moushira Elamrawy, a lawyer for free culture and free software in Alexandria, he reminded the Conference as an opportunity for the nascent Community techie in Egypt to meet in person. Two years later, the arrest of Internet has shown the need for a community of independent technical experts to help secure the connection of the Egyptians in the world.

The day that was off the Internet represented a point of no return, MS. Elamrawy said. "It was definitely one of the most inspiring. We felt abandoned — completely isolated from the world. "

MS. Elamrawy, which is 27 and trained as an architect, but consults on developing free culture projects like Wikipedia, talked by telephone from San Francisco, where he led after protests of Alexandria.

The protesters, he said, understood that in the time of darkness, was particularly important to document what happened. Knew, he said, that at some point the Internet would be back, and people would like to know the Agency.

Ahmad Balal, a radiologist at hospitals of the University of Cairo, which was a student of medicine during the Conference in 2008, Wikipedia has been such a reporter. Mr. Balal wrote in an e-mail that his Facebook wall was the best way to relive what he experienced during the protests.

He joined protests in the beginning, the 25th of January, but there is a disturbing gap on his Facebook Wall, when the Internet was down and friends from Egypt outside asked how it was but received no reply.

On February 2nd, 5: 18 a.m., when the Internet was back, wrote in English, one of the few times he: "Internet is back in Egypt. Mr. Hosni Mubarak has offered to us after the hang of it only for 5 days. A generous man! "

Forty-two minutes later, appeared a photograph of a crowded Tahrir Square. Read the caption, "I was there."