Social media empowers the people

Toby Shapshak: "WHEN you cross the road in Cairo, don't stop and don't run," the owner of my little hotel told me when I arrived. "The cars will drive around you."

Seventeen years ago, and Cairo remains by far the busiest city I have ever been to. I loved the Egyptian capital, the most populated city in Africa at the time, and its mad pace.

Buses never quite stopped, just slowed down, so you had to jump off them or jog to jump on.

The traffic lights were ignored for white-uniformed traffic police who stood at the major intersections and blew their whistles to change traffic flow.

The street crossing technique worked, and I perfected it by walking through the six-lane traffic to the centre of Tahrir Square.

My travelling companion - who moved out of Margate because it was too "hectic" - didn't find it as exhilarating as I did, cursing me at every step.

I crossed back over in triumph.

I'd forgotten about that mad moment in that square until the past 10 days, which have had my eyes glued to the television, like much of the rest of the world, staring at the extraordinary scenes of bravery and defiance in Egypt.

They are mad, exhilarating scenes of that almost forgotten concept, the power of the people.

First in Tunisia, now in Egypt, ordinary people have given life to John Denver's immortal song What One Man Can Do.

There has been a lot of talk about the role social media - specifically Facebook and Twitter - have played in the Egyptian revolution and the ousting of Tunisian president Ben Ali.

A rumour I heard was that Tunisia only got Facebook access when Ben Ali's daughter, who was studying abroad, returned home and wanted to stay in touch with her friends. I bet you he didn't know what it is, but there's a photo of an Egyptian protestor reading "thank you Facebook" being e-mailed and tweeted.

Twitter was also involved in the disputed Iranian elections last year.

There is some dispute about how integral the role of this new media has been - some commentators say it has been overstated in Iran, where it was more the outside world than the internal struggle that used it - but nonetheless, it played a part. And it will play a bigger part.

The key reason is that they are information and communication networks - and any oppressive regime can tell you depriving its oppressed citizens of information and the ability to communicate with each other keeps leaders in power.

Egyptian authorities shut down the internet, turning off the servers that turn our English words for websites (such as www.timeslive.co.za) into the numerical string that computers use to identify each other and top-level country codes (like South Africa's .za or Egypt's .eg).

Because the internet is restricted in Egypt, it was relatively simple to disable these servers so internet users couldn't see the outside world, and vice versa.

Shutting off cellular networks and restricting SMSes is, sadly, even simpler.

In spite of this - and in the ethos of the internet's decentralised nature and doctrine of information wants to be free - Egyptians have been able to communicate. Dial-up modems (the bunny ears of the internet) have been used, as have satellite connections and other clever mechanisms. Google and Twitter offered a service (twitter.com/speak2tweet) that allows people to call a number and converts that voicemail into a tweet.

The courage and defiance shown by those ordinary people in Tahrir Square which, ironically, means Liberation Square, is truly amazing.

As was the reported human shield that gathered around the Cairo Museum to prevent looting. The streets of Cairo will never be the same again.

• Shapshak is editor of Stuff magazine