Calhouns Can(n)ons

Calhoun’s Can(n)on for June 17 2009

Twittering in Tehran

“Show me a day when world wasn’t new.”
Sister Barbara Hance.

The old mullahs, with their world view and brain patterns laid down years ago by rote memorization of a series 15th century scrolls, and all the old Supreme Leaders & Grand Councils of Persian Poobahs with their sclerotic edicts and baton-wielding police are all comically doomed by a Tweet.

Go ahead, old men, shut down the radios, TVs, try to block information transition via phone, fax, satellite dish. Your grandchildren, fiddling with those newfangled iPhones are out of your control. Have been for years. They’re not even living in the same century as you are. So, it’s time warp time here in the ancient kingdom of Persia. Tweet time. Facebook in Farsi. What R U doing? Having a revolution. What RU doing?

With news reporters tossed out of Iran and the old means of information transmission temporarily shut down, our 21st century kids in our Brave New World found a way to stay in touch. Even CNN was patching in their news by using information from Tweets and Facebook and blog entries, all while running disclaimers that the information wasn’t verified. Nope, not verified but unstoppable. The damned kids and their infernal machines long ago figured out a way around their elders, as kids in every generation always do. It was comic. And wonderful.

And another reminder that plan as we must, control what we can, there is no stopping certain things when their time has come. The irony in Tehran is that exactly one generation ago, the parents of these Tweeting kids staged a revolution of their own. This one was against the hated Shah and his dreaded SAVAK secret police. In their youth and revolutionary fervor, they didn’t understand that religious robes and piety are no guard against tyranny and soon found out that replacing one tyrant with a culture of religious tyrants turned out to be a poor bargain. It was a lesson their children clearly learned, so here we are again, spawn of the revolutionaries taking to the streets, cell phone and Blackberry in hand.

Here in the U.S. the cold warrior, sclerotic old guard are knee-jerking the old git-mah-gun rhetoric —their constant default position. Time for a little Shock and Awe? Get the CIA into a black-ops like we did in 1953 to overthrow the duly elected Iranian president and ensure our puppet, the Shah, gets on the throne, complete with billions in armaments – gotta keep our fingers on that oil, now don’t we? Thankfully, a new generation is running Washington. They are apparently better informed about history and mercifully more nuanced about an incredibly nuanced situation. With some luck and with some patience – and lots of nuanced calm – events could unfold safely. Not to mention that wiser heads in this country (and Iran) should know that even if the present Iranian election isn’t sorted out fairly this time, it doesn’t matter in the long run since the old regime is doomed. It’s simply a matter of demographics. The children of revolutionaries should know a thing or two about timing. And numbers.

Similar changes are taking place in this country as well, complete with Tweets. Gay marriage and gays in the military are done deals. Demographics dictate that reality. Just a matter of time. Dittto many other hot button social issues. The young live in a different reality. Always have. And while a certain number of values and traditions get transmitted and carried down like DNA fragments, other realities die off or get mutated into something new. Even technologies are mutating as our clever, clever children look at their cell phones and say, Hmmm, I wonder what ELSE this thing can do. Then go write an App for it.

In the meantime, maybe we should start looking at cells phones as neurons and Tweets as the electrical impulses firing between them. Now picture a neuron network stretching around the world among billions of people . . . in real time. What RU doing? Having a revolution. U? Me 2! Cool.

Ah, such possibilities.