On a snowy winter morning, contemplating desert...

So I've been watching some of the footage from Cairo, from Tahrir. And people have already started putting up patriotic, stirring videos on Youtube...

Patriotism

But I worry. Mubarak is pretty stable, he's lasted for almost 30 years. And there is no real successor for him, as far as I know. He should have been moving Egypt towards more of a democracy, but its not happening.

And its very odd for me to watch these images from Tahrir, from Egypt, and see people I went to school with posting about journalist friends being arrested, or how to survive tear gas attacks.

And the media is obviously having a field day with this, particularly after a British journalist was rounded up as well...I had one friend out in Maadi who said it didn't seem like there was really much going on...that it seemed like an ordinary day. So the protests are probably pretty localised. But it also seems that the impetus is growing. And some of this is a result of modern technology.

I think its going to be a lot more difficult to have dictatorships with the advent of the Internet, youtube, twitter. There are more and more devices that record, that take pictures, that document. There are more ways to access these sites now, even remotely. So even if the Egyptian government, as an example, blocks twitter, or blocks Facebook, people can still access it through third-party apps. So the word still gets out there, and is growing.

Even China, with blocking blogs and blocking various Internet sites, can't get them all immediately. So a few people see something, grab it, copy it, post it...and its out there.

I don't think Mubarak is going to go out without a fight, but I think that people now have information as well as frustration. And that is going to make a difference.

And now I'm off to dig myself out of the most recent mountain of snow....