No one else was in sight. For a minute, I thought she was talking to herself. Then I heard the jingle of a leash. Oh, that made sense. She was talking to her dog.
The one-sided jabber went on, much too long for even a potty-averse pooch. Embarrassed, I realized the daybreak dogwalker was talking on her cellphone.
Ah, we women do love to multi-task.
I moved on to the dahlias, pondering - and not for the first time - how dramatically cellphones have changed the way we communicate.
We’re never out of touch, never out of pocket, never out of reach. Unless, of course, we forget the phone - or run out of minutes.
Yes, without question, cellphones have had a major impact on day-to-day life. People who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time find it perfectly possible to walk and chat, work and chat, shop and chat, drive and chat. But that’s only the mundane part.
Cellphones and their technological cousin, the Internet, are changing the way the world lives. This week, cellphones and the Internet may be changing history.
Chaotic, amateurishly shot, but heart-rending scenes from Iran make that plain.
Cellphone cameras have become the “weapons of choice” to tell the story of the disputed presidential election. Iranian supporters of “defeated” candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi may be “Twittering” their way to revolution.
Facing massive protests and credible charges of a stolen election, the Iranian government is doing what governments always do when trying to quell dissent. They’re trying to stop the flow of information by suppressing the media and cutting off traditional channels of communication.
It isn’t working.
Somebody forgot to tell them this is the 21st century. As soon as something happens, almost anywhere in the world, it goes global faster than you can say “Susan Boyle.” Thousands of Iranians are making a stand - cellphone cameras in hand, Twittering fingers flying.
As Time.com pointed out, the loudest cries of protest have been heard in a medium that “didn’t even exist the last time Iran had an election. So what exactly makes Twitter the medium of the moment? It’s free, highly mobile, very personal and very quick. It’s also built to spread, and fast. Twitterers like to append notes called hashtags — #theylooklikethis — to their tweets, so that they can be grouped and searched for by topic; especially interesting or urgent tweets tend to get picked up and retransmitted by other Twitterers, a practice known as retweeting, or just RT. And Twitter is promiscuous by nature: tweets go out over two networks, the Internet and SMS, the network that cell phones use for text messages, and they can be received and read on practically anything with a screen and a network connection.”
That’s what makes it hard, nearly impossible, to stop.
If there had been cellphones and Twittering at Tiananmen Square, the history of China might have unfolded differently.
Of course, it remains to be seen if the Iranian authorities will find ways to crack down on “Twitterers” or to stop people with cellphone cameras from telling the story they don’t want told. The Revolutionary Guard has ordered people to remove any information that could “create tension” from Twitter and other sites or face legal action. In Iran, that doesn’t mean a slap on the wrist.
It’s important to remember that “cybernews” isn’t always right. Not every “tweet” is truth. Information has not been and often cannot be verified. Some of the “tweets” are being posted by eyewitnesses. Others by people who aren’t even in Iran but hope to influence the protests. The government, too, may “tweet” disinformation to confuse or set-up the protesters.
Still, the same technology that lets a LaGrange dogwalker talk in her backyard has turned the whole world into one giant backyard.
The potential that the cyberworld can, literally, revolutionize the real world is, well, real. Very real.
It may already be happening.
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