World revolutionised by text messaging

Every time you think that people are getting over their techno fear, when you think the message is getting through about the wonderful world that technology opens up, along comes something like the recent Internet babies case to lend credence to the nay-sayers' cause.

The fact that Alan and Judith Kilshaw bought twin baby girls through the Internet is grist to the mill for those who choose to see new technology only as a vessel for all things depraved, debased and disturbing. And while that individual case may satisfy the criteria for all of the above, now might be a good time to take a look at some of the positive aspects of technology.

The use of new media as a tool of revolution could be the subject of a great PhD thesis or book. The first major event that put technology to use in this way was the attempted revolution in China in 1989, something which, due to the image of a lone man blocking the path of a tank in Tiananmen Square, is ingrained in the mind of anyone old enough to remember. Because the Chinese were not too keen on the idea of a people's revolution, they sought to put it down through strangling channels of information so that people in that vast country might not find out about it, and, when that failed, through the sheer weight of oppression.

The reason their efforts at stifling the spread of news of the revolution failed was due in no small part to the use of fax machines. Chinese people living abroad, students in the main, who saw what was happening in Beijing on their TV, faxed their friends in other Chinese cities to tell them what was happening. Who knows what might have happened if the use of e-mail and the Internet was as accessible then as it is now.

Working in Russia about five years ago, U2 producer Brian Eno was amazed at the number of mobile phones he saw. Almost everyone he met had one. Inquiring as to why this was, he was told that since the break-up of the Soviet Union, people had wanted access to all the things that we in the West took for granted, such as phones. But the phone companies were unable to erect masts and put wires for fixed-line phones into people's houses quickly enough, so they just got mobiles instead. The quick adoption of technology allowed them not just catch up, but surpass what was then the norm in the West.

The advance in mobile phones that allows for the sending and receiving of short text messages is the latest tool to be used in revolutionary circumstances. The recent ousting of President Joseph Estrada was due in no small part to the protests of a quarter of a million people on the streets of the capital, Manila.

Word that the Catholic Church would swear in vice-president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the new president was spread by people through mobile text messages.

When efforts to impeach Estrada collapsed the message "Trial collapsed" was flying around the network within minutes. Each message ended with the words "Pass this on".

With the movement and the method gathering apace, the next message exhorted the receivers to "Be angry. Come outside at 11 and make noise." The next message told people where to gather. The one after that told people: "Wear black because we're mourning the death of truth and justice."

When the news that the government had collapsed filtered through, the text message going round was a simple: "I guess we've won again."

Text messages were also used in Prague last October at the anti-IMF/World Bank protests. As the action would move from one hot spot to another, the troops were mustered and moved with text messages.

The right or wrong of these protests is not in question here, merely the fact that technology made it easier for them to happen. There is a lot more to it than buying babies on the Internet.