When people started rioting in Egypt the government put down it´s heavy hand on communications. For instance, the government prevented people from being able to send sms messages on their phones. This they did to prevent people from being able to set up meetings and organize the riots.
They also shut down the whole internet.
When Google´s engineers heard about this they were not happy. They contacted Twitter engineers and tried to come up with some sort of workaround. They ended up with a special telephone number that enabled people to leave voicemail that was translated into a sound file and automatically posted online.
This enabled protesters to get word out as to what was going on in their country in spite of the oppression of information!
I thought this was pretty excellent work on behalf of two of the biggest internet companies. Of course both trade upon the image of supporting democracy and generally being ethical - but why be cynical maybe they trade on that image because they generally are.
ReplyDeleteIt was a funny one also just for the phenomenon of internet based and birthed communication forms evolving to take advantage of primitive old phone lines.