I remember Churchill’s word about the “people of Paris” in his book My Early life, 1930. He says that in French political system you had the two assemblies, the president, the government, the partis and this “strange and vague actor called the people of Paris”. That is true, we have such an elusive actor since the French revolution of 1789.
We can say now that a similar actor as entered the Arab political scene: the “Arab street”. This “Arab street” suddenly went from a non-existence to being the fearless, dominant actor. Just today in Tunisia, the transition Prime Minister resigned after only 6 week in power, because too many protesters fought against him and his close relationship with the former regime. The street began to speak 2 months ago in Tunisia and never became silent since.
Not to mention Egypt, Lybia, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria etc. The “Arab street” isn’t more only a transition place to move or make business, it is not only a place that fear the USA with bad buzz against them (do you remember the suspicious images of joy in the “Arab Street” the 9-11?) , this street is now a place to organize a political movement. There really is a new actor over there.
Other interesting point, in the majority of this countries mentionned above were the population goes “spontaneously” into protests, this is not really spontaneous. We have feelings of the population oriented by organized web actors.
I remember since the beginning of the Internet, some obvious connections between Internet and the streets have been observed in terms of use and marketing have been observed by specialists.
Last point, so we have decentralized, cloud-computed discussion rooms were the revolutions were planned, which had as a primer objective to actually occupy symbolic physical space (Tahrir square in Cairo, Pearl Square in Bahrain, Bourguiba avenue in Tunis).
Welcome to the new world.
Why on Earth ... ? 