Oh No You Didn't

In June 2010, as reported by Newsweek, "a young Alexandria businessman named Khaled Said, who had posted a video on the Web showing cops pilfering pot from a drug bust, was assaulted at an Internet café by local police. They dragged him outside and beat him to death in broad daylight."

Photos of Khaled Said's "battered corpse" went viral. Before technology, the news would've spread by word-of-mouth, newspaper headlines, and snail mail--not slow, exactly, but slower.

Thanks to the Internet, the story spread like wildfire. Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Egyptian techie, started a facebook page called "We Are All Khaled Said," and very soon, it became the center for a powerful campaign against Egypt's police brutality. Ghonim updated the page with a constant stream of news, photos, and videos.

When Tunisia toppled their dictator on Jan. 14, Ghonim invited the "Khaled Said" fans--all 350,000 of them--to a protest.

Within three days, 50,000 people clicked "yes."

Mubarak's government cut off the Internet, in a kind of last-ditch desperation, but it was too late to stop what had already been set in motion. Mubarak wasn't just blowing out a candle. He was fighting a fire.