Wireless World: The 'Orange Revolution'
Gene Koprowski, 30.12.2004 14:42
Great story about how technology has made opportunities for democracy in foreign countries.
By Gene J. Koprowski
Published 12/27/2004 11:41 AM
CHICAGO, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- The court-ordered election rematch in Ukraine this past Sunday, featuring opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, probably would not have happened were it not for mobile phone technologies.The technologies -- text messaging services in particular -- enabled hundreds of thousands of youthful demonstrators to coordinate their activities and take to the streets of Kiev to contest the November election results, experts told UPI's Wireless World."The most significant aspect of this thing is the mobilization of the population," said Lubomyr Hajda, associate director of Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute in Cambridge, Mass. "It led to the birth of a civic nation, not an ethnic nation."-- Wireless World is a weekly column examining how mobile telecommunications technologies are transforming society, by Gene J. Koprowski, who covers technology for UPI Science News. E-mail: 
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