A walk through the 2nd Annual World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science is like a walk through a collective brain belonging to visionary, techy, and (mostly) benevolent inventors. "Collective" because much of the work on display at the annual DIY exhibit relies on shared hardware, shared software, or interdisciplinary collaboration.

Take, for example, the newly launched Bare Paint, developed by UK-based company Bare Conductive. The non-toxic electrically conductive paint was developed by a team of designers and engineers from the Royal College of Art who turned their Master's project into a global business.

At the Faire, held on Sept 17 and, Bare Conductive displayed several simple paintings, each of which activated a device when skin met paint. Touching a picture of a light bulb lit up an actual bulb. A sketched trumpet tooted musical tones when tapped. According to co-founder Matt Johnson, in order to turn on the lights in the organization's London studio, all they have to do is touch the walls.

Environmental outreach and renewable energy were prominent themes at the Faire.

Protei's Open Source Sailing Drone is a prototype of a remote-controlled sail boat designed to help clean up oil spills without exposing people to harmful substances. The company uses Open Hardware licensing, which means the design can be viewed and modified by anyone around the world.

KeegoTech displayed MudWatt, an educational microbial fuel cell kit that uses the metabolic properties of the microbes Shewanella and Geobacter to generate energy. Grab some dirt from your backyard, throw in some leftovers from last night's dinner and in a few days the LED light affixed to the kit will blink.

The outreach group Ioby displayed "seed bombs": clay-compost-seed balls that look dangerously like truffles. They're actually meant to be tossed into vacant patches of land to prompt vegetative growth where there isn't any.

And industrial designer Karen MacKay showed how even inside a tiny New York apartment you can grow your own grub. She uses a hydroponic system (water, no dirt) and hangs the plants vertically in felt strips.

The Faire also had a healthy dose of whimsy. The Sashimi Tabernacle Choir provided some musical accompaniment. (There's no good way to explain a lobster conducting a choir of fish so I'll let the images speak for themselves).

Dash 7 built a towering swing set that drizzles water from the top beam. But, as swingers pass through, the water stops for a few moments, letting them pass. The time lapse adjusts to each individual. After a few swings the model predicts when someone will pass through again and adjusts the water flow so that everyone stays dry...at least in theory.

My "Most Obnoxious Design" award goes to DachisGroup for Social Shocker, an interactive game in which two people each rest a hand on a platform and guess which of two items produce the most Google hits (Guinness or Bud Light, Chocolate or Rocky Road, etc.). The loser gets a 3 millisecond shock along with a pic taken by an iPad timed to capture the exact moment of recoil. For added fun, all pics are publicly posted here.

And my "Blew Me Away, Please Give This Woman Some Funding Award" goes to Veronika Scott for The Empowerment Plan. For her class project (with some outside help from such heavy-hitters as Dupont), the Detroit undergrad hired and taught homeless women to sew Tyvek coats that double as sleeping bags for the homeless. Creating jobs, teaching usable skills, and providing much-needed warmth for a population who needs all of the above—that's technology with purpose.

Half a year out, we're still learning how revolutionaries took hold of Facebook and Twitter to assist in overthrowing not one but two regimes.

The subject continues to be debated, largely across a false dichotomy of Gladwell ("the revolution will not be tweeted") versus cyberutopianism ("it's a Facebook revolution!"). Amongst close followers, including many revolutionaries themselves, however, the reality is more subtle: The revolution will be tweeted, and Facebooked, but it will also be fought, sometimes bloodily, on the streets.

In "Streetbook," John Pollock deftly illustrates the impact of social media tools in Tunisia and Egypt, the two countries in which, thus far, we have seen the true Arab Spring. Pollock's conclusion—that digital tools contribute greatly to the offline organizing necessary to topple a regime—fits the narrative put forth by the various activists he interviews (as well as the many I've seen speak at various fora this year), while his narrative offers an insider's view into just how those tools have been used.

Indeed, in Tunis and Kasserine, Mahalla and Cairo, digerati took hold of social media, combining online with offline organizing to great effect. Elsewhere in the region, however, such as on the streets of Hama and Manama, such tools have been widely used yet have enabled little change, the power of each regime stronger than that of the opposition.

Last week, I attended a workshop at the University of Kentucky, Louisville's Center for Asian Democracy, in which a clutch of academics debated the connections between new media and democratization, and the parallels of such between Asia and the Arab world. Central to the discussion was the distinction between "democracy" and "democratization," two words that have been used largely interchangeably in mainstream reporting of the Arab Spring.

While democracy—though not quite yet achieved—is hopefully the outcome of the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings, there has been little credit given to the democratizing prospects of social media tools elsewhere: the strengthening of the public sphere, the development of protest movements, and—as Samir Garbaya is quoted as saying in "Streetbook"—"the transfer of the interaction from social networks to manifestation in the real world, on the street."

Through his interviews and in detailing the tactics of previous uprisings, Pollock sets forth plausible courses of action for would-be revolutionaries, while at the same time working toward an understanding of how digital tools were part of the process in working toward overthrowing Tunisia's Ben Ali and Egypt's Mubarak. That process may be what matters most if democracy is the end goal; and if so, then we ought not discount the in-between process of democratization. In other words, even if it takes months more to bring down Syria's Assad, or to change the face of Bahraini governance, digital tools have already helped set the groundwork needed for civil society to move forward in those goals.

At the same time, what "Streetbook" touches on only briefly is regime control of the Internet, which as we have seen varies wildly from country to country. Observers take note: While in Tunisia, the regime had a firm grasp on social media, censoring and surveilling for the better part of a decade, and in Egypt, the regime resorted to a complete shutdown of networks to quell dissent, regimes are quickly learning from each other's mistakes and beefing up their arsenals. Both Syria and Bahrain appear to have a stronger grasp on the Internet than their predecessors, which will most certainly hamper the ability of activists to use digital tools to much effect.

Therefore, the experiences of Pollock's subjects should not necessarily be seen as a lesson for understanding digital activism writ large, but rather as a study of methods.

With his piece, Pollock accomplishes what more well-known columnists have failed to: provide a sober view into the lives of modern revolutionaries without resorting to common tropes about what this all means. I am hopeful that reporting like his will set the stage for a more nuanced discussion of why digital tools matter ... and where they don't.

Jillian C. York is the Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She writes regularly about free expression, politics, and the Internet, with particular focus on the Arab world. She is on the board of directors of Global Voices Online, and writes for Al Jazeera English, and the Guardian's Comment is Free.

"I'm Not Afraid to Die, I'm Afraid to Lose the Battle"

As Libyan freedom fighters entered Tripoli on August 21, my Twitter feed lit up with tweets about Libya and Gaddafi—even if people couldn't quite agree which of some 112 transliterations of his name to make the hashtag.

Once again, a global conversation about a global event was happening in near real time. As well, of course, as the meta-global-conversation about the global conversation: in particular, widespread admiration for Alex Crawford's outstanding reporting for Sky News, especially compared with Al Jazeera, CNN and the BBC—all of whom were comparatively slow off the mark.

Watching on Twitter, Sky News and Al Jazeera simultaneously, the collective energy and excitement was palpable, as Mark Lynch notes on Foreign Policy:

"The reactions...once again show the potent and real demonstration effects which characterize today's highly unified Arab political space.I don't see how anybody watching al-Jazeera, following Arab social media networks, or talking to people in the region could fail to appreciate the interconnected nature of Arab struggles. It's the same sense of shared fate and urgency that those who follow the Arab public sphere could feel in February and March."

Among that shared urgency, one fate was quickly remembered: that of computer engineer turned citizen journalist Mohammed 'Mo' Nabbous. He came to the world's attention on February 19 with an emotional interview given to the BBC from a rooftop in Benghazi, four days after the Libyan uprising began in Benghazi:

In it, he remarked "I'm not afraid to die, I'm afraid to lose the battle," adding, "That's why I want the media to see what's going on."

Exactly a month later he was shot by Gaddafi's troops—possibly by a sniper—as he reported from the streets. The background sound on his last report captures the ferocity of the Second Battle of Benghazi:

Hours later, French fighter jets began to add the military might of the NATO's UN-mandated Operation Unified Protector to the equation, forcing pro-Gaddafi loyalists into retreat. Enormous international media coverage was now assured—but in the early days, it was Mo Nabbous and the network he inspired who made the running.

According to the indefatigable Andy Carvin of NPR: "Mohammad Nabbous was my primary contact in Libya, and the face of Libyan citizen journalism."

Just 28 years old when he died, in the last 28 days of his life Nabbous was instrumental in getting, "the media to see what's going on."

The Human Voice

Sixty-five years earlier, the French author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry crash-landed deep in the Libyan desert, somewhere between Benghazi and Cairo. The experience inspired his best-known work, The Little Prince, and is recounted in Wind, Sand and Stars, where he remarks:

"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures—in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together."

'Transport of the human voice' is at the heart of citizen journalism, which has come of age in the Arab uprisings—and citizens around the world are helping to make it happen. For example, almost 30,000 donors helped the international civic organization Avaaz—"voice" in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages—build a war chest for its Breaking the Middle East Blackout campaign. They've used these funds to supply high-tech phones, satellite internet modems, and training to activists in Syria, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere.

A lot of the footage and eyewitness accounts Avaaz supporters fostered has fed directly into mainstream news cycles across CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and others, as well as through the Avaaz Arab Awakening Twitter account.

Avaaz has grown astonishingly quickly since being founded in January 2007. Today it claims a supporter base of over 9.7 million, and has a multimillion dollar turnover. Avaaz retains something of the energy and character of a startup, deliberately using the digital realm to create a "new nimbleness and flexibility." This pattern—using digital technology to link people, funds, and ideas—was at the heart of Mohammed Nabbous' work.

"This Genius Guy"

"When the revolution started, Gaddafi cut all means of communication outside Libya," says Gihan Badi, a Libyan architect based in the UK. She calls Nabbous, who is one of her best friends, "this genius guy," in part because he saw what needed to be done and reacted fast. He left the street protests to spend two days rigging up a satellite connection for live feeds. "He just took all these lies away; he was sending a clear message to the whole world."

A lot of people were involved. Nabbous reached out into his own and other networks. A group of figures like Badi acted as critical nodes, linking expatriate Libyans and other supporters. A friend of Mo's working for a German supplier of cellphones to Libya got together some equipment, which was brought from Germany and smuggled into Benghazi via Egypt.

When the uprising moved to Misrata, says Badi, computer engineers there followed the same method Nabbous had pioneered in Benghazi. "We were raising funds to buy this equipment and send it from Malta. Then we did the same when the fighting reached the Western mountains [Jebel Nafusa]." These links were crucial, says Badi, in letting people see Libya "from the inside out".

These spontaneously activated networks found angles to interest mainstream media, and provided contacts to be interviewed, as well as helping journalists on the ground. A lot of the coverage we've seen of Libya, and the opposition's Transitional National Council representatives, has been quietly supported by this type of backroom operation.

In Tripoli, says Badi, there were checkpoints everywhere, with pro-Gaddafi soldiers specifically checking for memory sticks. Badi taught one activist, via the Internet, to use Dropbox, and then started passing on a stream of videos and photos to the BBC. She did everything through the Internet. "I was connected to most of the cities. Talking on Skype, sometimes I was stuck to my computer for 24 hours." She also got coordinates of Gaddafi's troop locations and ammunition warehouses which she then sent onto NATO's Italian command center in Naples.

"I can't believe I was doing this job," says Badi, "I am just a simple person, I haven't done much compared to being someone on the frontline holding a gun facing a tank." She knows hundreds of people in Europe and the US who quietly provided help and support in many different ways, but says "none of us want anything for what we're doing; we just want to help our brothers and sisters."

"The New Media Ecology Is a Game-Changer"

This desire to help—fired by the life-threatening urgency of revolution—flenses the supposed divide between cyber-utopians and cyber-skeptics over the role of social media. As Aaron Brady notes in The Middle Ground between Technology and Revolutions (on Technology Review's Arab Spring microsite), "the important thing is the groups themselves, the grass-roots organizing and access-to-each other."

These groups coalesced spontaneously as they urgently organized and accessed each other. They used whatever modern communication tools they could. Social media is one part of the toolset, which also includes TV and radio, cellphones and Skype, Dropbox and memory sticks.

Johnny West's new book Karama! Journeys Through the Arab Spring, offers a distinction between state media, with its "old, tired set pieces of political theatre the Arab world has known for the past fifty years" and:

"[the revolutionaries] own social and personal media networks. At its rawest, reportage direct from the streets, but also the next level up, an unpaid army of collators and editors, synthesising and summarising the revolution as it spread. These networks were fast gaining recognition from international satellite stations such as Al Jazeera and the Arabic language services of France 24 and the BBC, which fed back into the impetus of the protests themselves. If you're risking your life, it helps to know, and to know other people know, that you're a hero."

Zeynep Tufecki in New Media and the People-Powered Uprisings (also on Technology Review's Arab Spring microsite) says collective action problems are the hardest to crack because it's difficult for citizens to coordinate and communicate. And in that regard, she adds, the new media ecology is a game-changer:

"The new media ecology is not just the Internet but a potent combination of a politicized pan-Arab broadcast network, Al-Jazeera, mass diffusion of video and picture-capable cell phones, as well as social media—and all this in just a few years."

We can now observe and comment on global news events in near real time. And we can help each other while doing so. I recall a tweet during the 2008 Mumbai attacks when someone from the Baltic region, anxious about a friend, asked for the number of the Embassy in Mumbai. Within seconds, it was posted. Seconds later, someone else tweeted the Ambassador's cellphone number.

When Mo Nabbous died, he left behind a wife and his first, unborn child: a girl called Maya. He also left an inspiring legacy of courageous citizen journalism, one which which Gihan Badi hopes will be honored in every city in Libya. His favourite quote was "A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle," which chimes well with St. Francis of Assisi's, "All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light from a single candle." The new tools we have to hand are fast becoming as ubiquitous as candles once were—and as we light them up in potent new combinations the game is truly changing.

http://globalrelieflibya.org/