On June 24, 2009 at a corner of Republic Street, in Tehran, a main center for printing shops, a young engaged couple fled into an alley to escape a charge by club-wielding security forces. "Why are they attacking me?" the woman cried. "I only came here to print my wedding cards!"
"The people are like water and the ruler a boat. Water can support a boat or overturn it." From Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Richard the Third
I have been riveted by the news coming out of Iran. You Tube and Twitter messages are flooding the internet. Upheaval in a foreign country is not that unusual and reliable reports typically reach us via our news media. But here we have eyewitness accounts and pictures on a scale that has never been seen before. Watching the videos made on the street, and reading the tweets coming in from people risking their lives is fundamentally different than watching a reporter provide the details. You feel a connection to these people like nothing you feel from a news broadcast or a newspaper article. Suddenly, they are just like us. You find yourself cheering for them, anxious that they are unharmed and that justice prevails in their country. It is no longer abstract or political theorizing. We are one with them. We want them to be free - to make their own choices.
Can you imagine what the videos and tweets would have been like coming out of Tienanmen Square or Nazi Germany? How different would the world be, if today's technology had existed at crucial times in history?
