Egypt without Internet

Image American without the Internet. No, I'm serious. Try.

Exactly. It's almost unfathomable. Actually it's hard to imagine any society without the Internet. There isn't a person I know on this campus whose daily routine doesn't involve at least a few moments on the Internet. That includes Facebook, Twitter, email, Google, Google Maps, Blogger, your favorite blog, your daily newspaper, tonight's dinner recipe and so much more.

As of tonight, cell service joins the Internet as a luxury no longer available to Egyptian citizens. The government has taken down the cellular service providers, but it is only rumored to have taken down the Internet service providers. But the changes are likely.

The events in Egypt are slowing appearing to be a revolution in the county known for its Pharaohs and Pyramids. Facebook is being credited as the medium that started this all. Interestingly enough, the "man" behind the Facebook page is unknown. The name belongs to someone killed in 2009, but someone is using his profile to create the unrest now being watched by every country in the world.

Take a look at this article from msnbc.com:

Iran's Green Revolution had a martyr named Neda, a 26-year-old woman gunned down in the streets of Tehran. Tunisia's was Mohamed Bouazizi, an unemployed university graduate who set himself ablaze outside a government building. Egypt's is Khaled Said-because someone has been agitating under the dead man's name.

Said, a young businessman from Alexandria, was reportedly beaten to death by local police this summer-well before rumblings of the country's current unrest. But a Facebook page that bears his name has been one of the driving forces behind the upheaval that started last week.

The anonymous Facebook page administrator who goes by the handle El Shaheeed, meaning martyr, has played a crucial role in organizing the demonstrations, the largest Egypt has seen since the 1970s, that now threaten the country's authoritarian regime.

Yet even Egypt's most active activists have no idea who the anonymous organizer is.