The age of the image is upon us and the clock cannot be turned back. And yet the Mubarak regime is in denial. It started with muffling the voice of al-Jazeera. I was fortunate to be in Cairo during the first two days of the current uprising.

The age of the image is upon us and the clock cannot be turned back. And yet the Mubarak regime is in denial. It started with muffling the voice of al-Jazeera. I was fortunate to be in Cairo during the first two days of the current uprising. On January 25 and 26, when the roads around me were starting to be blocked, when sirens and loud speakers could be heard in the areas surrounding Tahrir Square, and when both the police and protesters were mobilizing in larger numbers than ever before, I was struck by the inattention that al-Jazeera was giving the protest.

The US State Department maintains nine full-time Arabic-language bloggers, two Farsi bloggers and two Urdu bloggers, while the Pentagon also maintains a team of bloggers. The UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office maintains two full-time Farsi language bloggers.

Hours after the government in Egypt shut down that country’s access to the Internet, hackers around the world started banding together to craft some kind of work-around. And one group claims to be only a day or two away from delivering a partial solution. Their initiative is called the Open Mesh Project...

The State Department has been working furiously and mostly behind the scenes to cajole and pressure Arab governments to halt their clampdowns on communications and social media. In Tunisia there seem to have been real results. In Egypt, it's too soon to tell.

There has been much argument about what technologies and international factors played a role in Tunisia's revolution. We covered Facebook's role, which I would summarize as significant but not determinative.

During the street demonstrations in Tunis, amidst the signs demanding “Ben Ali Out” were placards saying “Thank you, Al Jazeera.” The Qatar-based pan-Arab television network has never been allowed to open a bureau in Tunisia – a prescient if ultimately unsuccessful tactic by Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s government...