Egypt Turns To Relic Technology in their 'Dark Age'

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The civil unrest in Egypt hasn't abated and the country's citizens are still fighting strong for their basic right not to live in the dark age (come on, life without internet and cell phones?). Most of us were happy ditching dial-up in view of higher connection speeds but a few citizens in Egypt have brought back their dial-up just to be able to connect to the rest of the world. With 90% of the country's internet access shut down, some ISPs are actually facilitating people to use dial-up.  Jacob Applebaum, an American hacker associated with Wikileaks, is actually one of the individuals helping bring dial-up back in the country.

Dial-up isn't the only relic tech that's helping Egypt right now. Ham radio in the country has helped significantly in getting information out to the rest of the world. What is usually considered eccentric, is actually a somewhat godsend. And though landlines have been up and down over the past few days, there is a Twitter-based service, Jan25 Voices, that's bringing information to Egyptian citizens via tweets over a landline.

Speaking of Twitter, the company has spoken, without being too terribly specific, saying the tweets must flow. Hashtags supporting Egypt have sprung up in all sorts of combinations and Twitter themselves have made it clear what their stance on governments ordering them to supply information is. They've said they support the basic right of freedom of expression and if any official authority demands information about certain Twitter users, Twitter will try as far as possible to keep the user in the loop.

Finally, it wouldn't be a party with China hopping on board. The country has disrupted searches for 'Egypt' on search engines in the country and have even banned some Twitter hashtags. Any search for the word 'Egypt' on the Sina microblog will show you a message saying "Sorry, there are no relevant results". Facebook and Twitter were blocked in China, in all totality on January 25th but a lot of 'damaging communication' from within the country had already been done. The government specified that this is because Egypt and China have a good relationship and the government of China feels they should be supportive of the Eygptian government's efforts. But we all know China just loves a good banning session.