Writer's Journal

Hey, folks.  Normally, on thursdays, I post an amusing video.  Not this week; I’ve been doing a lot of essay writing and news-watching (mostly to do with the stuff going on over in Iran.)  It might seem odd to put a news story in a writers’ journal–even an open one like this–but a great many stories are inspired by the news, and the weird things that happen in our strange, strange world.

So, today, instead of moving pictures, I present you with a handful of static ones:

Twitter to Flickr

This is a collection of photographs taken in Iran that have been collected into a flickr account and put out there for use by News Organizations.  I thought you folks might like to see these photos and take a look at them yourselves, without the interpretation that always comes with them being used in the media.

This sort of thing is what Twitter, Flickr, etc. were meant to be for (not really, but it’s the best use for it.)  Citizen journalism at the speed of the wire:  right now, there’s a cyberwar going on in Iran, as the government tries to restrict the free flow of information.

I was going to post a link to the paranoid linux project (based on Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother) but it seems the project’s died on the vine.  Too bad, really.  There’s a wealth of relevant information on this sort of thing out there already:

• Instructables by W1n5t0n
• News story about Pirate Party & Anonymous assisting Iranian Protestors
  

But why do I find this interesting, you wonder?  There are a variety of reasons, and I’m not going into them all.  However, as a writer, I find this interesting because of the interplay of fiction and reality.  Go and look at the Little Brother link up higher on the page, realize that we’re coming into a cyberpunk future:  even if the government isn’t getting involved, people all over the world are.

Fascinating, no?