With the TV news full of images and sounds of serious civil unrest in Egypt, it’s fascinating to see how social media tools and channels – especially Twitter and social networking sites such as Facebook – have been enabling Egyptian citizens to rapidly broadcast images and sounds that parallel what the mainstream media is doing.

This BBC video report by reporter Adam Mynott published this morning is an excellent summary of what’s happening, even as the latest news talks of the Egyptian government shutting down the whole internet in an attempt to block people’s ability to communicate and share such imagery and sounds.

The trouble is, the genie – Jinn in Arabic – is well and truly out of the bottle in the Arab world too.

Momentous if not revolutionary times. Could this be a tipping point for massive change in Arabic societies, similar to the fall of Communism?