CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Fans of the classic Victorian fairy tale, "Alice in Wonderland," will recognize the words in this blog title. They were spoken by Alice, the little girl who fell through the looking glass into a strange new world where nothing was as she had known it before.

Before the events in Iran began to unfold, Twitter was already something of a social phenomenon. Network news types, celebrities and politicians were giving out their twitter "handles" like free yardsticks at the state fair. Business types were racking their brains trying to figure out how to sell on Twitter without looking like they were trying to sell on Twitter. Analysts were trying to determine whether Twitter was just another high-tech fad, or a game-changing milestone in the 21st century world of online communication.

Others still may be struggling with that question, but for me it's a done deal. Twitter is a game-changer. The election-cum-revolution in Iran has proven it beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Last Saturday, I spent virtually the entire day on Twitter tracking events in Iran. Brave Iranian students were finding all kinds of ways to circumvent the blocks and controls imposed by their government in order to get messages out about what was happening on the streets of Tehran. Minute by minute, we read about which Tehran neighborhoods were safe and which were under government control. We knew where protesters were gathering, and what time they planned to meet. When key protest leaders didn't get home when they were supposed to, we knew about it. We saw cell-phone video of courageous kids marching peacefully for democracy, and the plainclothes thugs known as "baseeji" beating them until the blood ran.

The amazing thing about all of this is that virtually no first-hand news was available on the mainstream media. MSNBC has virtually no news programming on weekends (apparently they didn't get the memo about news being a 24/7 business). CNN and FOXNews, along with other world media, had been prohibited by the Iranian government from shooting video or reporting from the streets. Their hands were tied, and their correspondents were muzzled.

So CNN and FOX covered the drama on Twitter. They ran the grainy, terrifying video clips we were getting in Tweets from all over Iran. They quoted messages from people like @persiankiwi, @change_in_Iran, and @oxfordgirl. They read official statements from Moussavi's Facebook page, which became a primary source for "official" information about the protests.

Think about it. While the mainstream media were completely disabled, it was Twitter and Facebook that gave us front-row seats to a revolution.

Even more amazing, we weren't just observers. At the request of Iranian students, we turned our Twitter avatars green to show our support (see photo below right). Tweeps in the U.S. set up proxies (I've only a vague idea of what that means) to help protesters continue getting their messages out. We retweeted important messages "outing" government agents posing as students and posting misinformation. We spread the word about their courage and the brutality of their fundamentalist oppressors.

Lying on my couch on Saturday night in Woodbury, Minnesota, with a heating pad wrapped around my sore arm (my diagnosis: bursitis) and my Macbook in my lap, I felt as if I were part of the fundamental change sweeping through the streets of Iran. I remembered the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran thirty years ago, and the anguish of watching 52 American citizens seized and held by Islamic revolutionaries for 444 days while our nation watched, helpless and frustrated.

When I recalled those events of the past, I realized that I had a stake in Iran's future. A whole new generation of Iranians was seeking to undo the mistakes of the past and replace theocracy with democracy. Even if we continue to disagree on key foreign policy issues, it would be great progress to see a more moderate Iran governed by people who see themselves as part of the world community. By supporting young Iranian freedom-fighters via Twitter and Facebook, thousands of Americans welcomed them into that world community.

Twitter asks the question, "What are you doing now?" Now we know what Twitter is doing--it's changing the world. Really. Literally. Changing the world. Wow.