Egyptian father names child "Facebook"

[scarletghoul]

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/02/21/egypt.child.facebook/index.html?hpt=T2

(CNN) -- A man in Egypt has named his newborn daughter "Facebook" in honor of the role the social media network played in bringing about a revolution, according to a new report.
Gamal Ibrahim, a 20-something, gave his daughter the name "to express his joy at the achievements made by the January 25 youth," according to a report in Al-Ahram, one of Egypt's most popular newspapers.
Many young people used Facebook and other social media networks to organize the protests, which began January 25 and ultimately led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power.
Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who organized a Facebook page on his own time, became a central figure of the revolution.


Not sure what to think of this haha.

Anyway it makes clear something very important- that social media is exactly that, social, despite being privately controlled. With the internet we have seen the rise of basically communist practices of filesharing, open-source software, etc, but it seems that with things like Facebook we are also seeing extremely important and world-changing social institutions coming into existence that are controlled by certain individuals. There's something really spooky about that. Facebook is something so central to these events that someone has named a child after it, yet its all controlled by Zuckerberg. This power of an individual website owner over 100000000s of peoples social lives has huge implications for the future.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Will her siblings be named Twitter and Google

[StalinFanboy]

communize the fbs

[scarletghoul]

Will her siblings be named Twitter and Google
Meat Spin

[Os Cangaceiros]

i c wut you did thar

[Shokaract]

Maybe he should've named her "labor unions."

[bcbm]

could have been worse; this could have happened when myspace was still popular

[Devrim]

. Facebook is something so central to these events that someone has named a child after it,

I don't think it is that important at all. In 1848 the revolution spread from Palermo in Sicily all across Europe within a month. Are these events happening much faster than that? Yes of course it is a tool that people are using, but I don't think it is in any way 'central'.

Devrim

[Delenda Carthago]

Funny enough, Goldman Sachs bought more Facebook stocks.Its surreal that they send away the USA puppet and they are celebrating it by naming their kids after a USA master.

[Chambered Word]

Wasn't there some interview article on the net with this Egyptian guy (I forget who he was/what his political tendencies were) who basically stated that the role social networking sites played in Egypt was grossly overexaggerated? This would make more sense, as a lot of Egyptian workers were living on something like $2 per day and it's hard to imagine the majority of them having computers.

[ʇsıɥɔɹɐuɐ ıɯɐbıɹo]

Wasn't there some interview article on the net with this Egyptian guy (I forget who he was/what his political tendencies were) who basically stated that the role social networking sites played in Egypt was grossly overexaggerated? This would make more sense, as a lot of Egyptian workers were living on something like $2 per day and it's hard to imagine the majority of them having computers.

I imagine they have public access terminals in libraries or the schools might have them.

[PhoenixAsh]

my only reaction to this: what an idiot...

[Blackscare]

my only reaction to this: what an idiot...

While I think it's misguided and silly (I think intifada would have been a better name), I doubt you've ever had such a meaningful and inspiring event happen in your life as this guy just did, so I wouldn't call him an idiot for going a bit overboard.

[Devrim]

I imagine they have public access terminals in libraries or the schools might have them.

I don't.

Devrim

[bricolage]

21.2% of the Egyptian population are internet users, it's higher in Tunisia at 35% but much lower in Libya at 5.5%. The average for Africa is 10.9%. I don't know whether this just includes home users of public access users, I'd imagine the latter though.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/

[PhoenixAsh]

While I think it's misguided and silly (I think intifada would have been a better es name), I doubt you've ever had such a meaningful and inspiring event happen in your life as this guy just did, so I wouldn't call him an idiot for going a bit overboard.

Well I had several. For example.. I unexpectedly after being given up survived two runs of cancer...I am still not going to name my kid Chemo (though Its a lot cooler than FB).
Point is inspiration is subjective...you can not really say someone never experienced it.

But it is not a question about inspiration...its a question about what your kid has to go through the rest of his life...its his name....and he is named after an internet tool. The fact that you think it was inspirational
and therefore have ceryain associations with it...does not mean people will have the same association in two years time.

[Mather]

I don't think it is that important at all. In 1848 the revolution spread from Palermo in Sicily all across Europe within a month. Are these events happening much faster than that? Yes of course it is a tool that people are using, but I don't think it is in any way 'central'.

Agreed.

The use of 'new media' such as Twitter and Facebook should merely be seen as a method of communication and nothing more. The actual causes of the popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and the protests in the rest of the Middle East and North Africa are economic and political ones, issues based around unemployment, corruption, social inequality, political oppression, censorship and other issues besides.

The popular uprisings of 1848 and the Bolsheviks made extensive use of political newspapers, Iskra being one example, yet no one refers to the 1917 revolution as a "newspaper revolution" or the "Iskra revolution".

[gorillafuck]

I kinda figured that the attribution of these events to facebook has been as a way for liberals to make western youth feel like they can relate to the demonstrations.

[Mather]

I kinda figured that the attribution of these events to facebook has been as a way for liberals to make western youth feel like they can relate to the demonstrations.

It has been the bourgeois media that has been the main culprit in spinning this 'new media' line. I have followed the events in the Arab world on TV and the satellite news channel France 24 has been the main culprit in promoting this line, along with CNN and the BBC to a slightly lesser extent.

My guess is that the bourgeois media in the West wants to obscure the real causes of the popular uprisings, by glossing over the economic, social and political demands of the protesters and trying to redefine their nature by promoting this line about Twitter and Facebook.

It is a case of taking the politics out of this situation and narrowing it down to 'new media'.