The Arab Spring

It began when a single desperate street vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire — and, amplified by social media, a wave of uprisings swept the Arab world, toppling several long-entrenched dictators. The mix was combustible and familiar: mass hardship, a huge cohort of educated young people with no jobs or voice, and a new medium to organize on. It is the revolutionary pattern wired for the smartphone — though, as so often, several of the revolutions curdled into new repression or civil war.