Google and Twitter versus Mubarak

Corporations are going to war now.

Is anyone else deeply disturbed by this?

The news is starting to read like a Robert A. Heinlein novel. In this instance, Google and Twitter developed a method for circumvention of Egypt's internet shutdown, at least as far as social media and mass communication are concerned, for the people of Egypt to use during the internet blackout imposed by their government.

While I think this is a laudable thing to do, it represents, along with Google's refusal to continue self-censoring in China, a change in corporate behavior away from their erstwhile more subtle methods (read: bribery, lobbying [read: bribery], and nepotism [the Japanese have a neat term for one form of it: amakudari, or 'descent from Heaven,' in which senior government officials take executive positions in the private sector after retirement. One might argue that the American way is more an 'ascent to Heaven,' given how many of our high officials have been or are ex-corporate CEOs and board members]).

This is new territory, folks. We must be vigilant.