Critics tell us the Internet takes us away from each other. While that may be partly true, it also brings us closer—particularly during a war.
When martial law was declared in Pakistan and Pakistanis were prevented by a media blackout from watching the TV news, Musharraf left the web alone, it was strangely bracing to read the words of the fearless Pakistani bloggers who posted up-to-the-second news frome the street using their Blackberrys and cell phones.
Now, with the conflict continuing between Russia and Georgia, we can monitor bloggers who post from the towns where the bombs are dropping.
The group Global Voices has been doing an excellent job in coordinating posts that relate to the South Ossetia crisis.
Here, for example, they’ve gathered some posts by bloggers in Tbilisi, Georgia.
But cyberspace has a flip side. And on Monday, the Georgian government accused Russia of engaging in “cyber warfare” by “disabling Georgian Websites.”
In response, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it had established alternate websites.
The Ministry folks made the announcement on their blog, of course.
At the Ministry’s website you can also find a running timeline of the conflict including such entries as this one from 6 pm last night telling that “Village Tkotsa Khashuri district 4 bombes were droped. None of them exploded.”
(The Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs needs to start using its spellcheck.)
With its own websites compromised, the Georgian Ministry has resorted to using blogspot to get its information out. (This means the Ministry’s URL that is nearly identical in structure that of a zillion American college student with blogs—namely: georgiamfa.blogspot.com.)
In many ways more than watching the television news, the Ministry’s blog and others bring us closer to the vulnerability felt by the the Georgians.
For instance, as I write this, a new blog post says that there are..”acts of aggression committed by the Russian Black Sea Fleet…” However, as yet, there is nothing about this on the news….
Blog on, comrades.