The Puzzle

My taxi driver just said he hates Mubarak. What am I supposed to say? Is this guy crazy? Does he want to be imprisoned? Is he trying to get me to say something that will get me arrested or thrown out of the country? The location was Cairo; the year was 2004, yet the conversation seems like yesterday. This was the first time I sensed a loss of fear and discursive inhibition among Egyptians – a new communication pattern?

The taxi driver's forthrightness was not an isolated event. Our grocery delivery man, less than a week later, told me he loved Bin Laden. He thought the Arab world needed more leaders like him, willing to stand up to America. Why was this youth publicly celebrating a known terrorist who had killed nearly 3,000 of my fellow citizens? His words were both an affront to me and risky for his own personal safety, given Egypt's repressive public sphere. What explains these increasingly bold speech acts? Did Internet diffusion and use have anything to do with the changing communication environment in Cairo?

Six years later, an interview with two women for this study in Kuwait directly explains the Internet's potential disruptiveness. A twenty-two-yearold Kuwaiti female, who has 1,314 Facebook friends, sends more than 200 text messages a day, and visits blogs on fashion and photography, observes that the Internet

Similarly, a twenty-four-year-old Kuwaiti female, who has over 600 Facebook friends, sends over 150 text messages a day, and notes that the Internet ‘puts you in touch with any information you need and kills boredom at work’, also explains that Internet use