Al-Jazeera's Wadah Khanfar

Al-Jazeera Chief Wadah Khanfar addressed this year's TED conference about the civic uprisings sweeping the Arab world and gave his take on where the unrest might be leading. He said he believes that social media are helping to make the Middle East and northern Africa more democratic.

"The future we were dreaming for has arrived," Khanfar told conferees (see the video of Khanfar's talk, below, made public yesterday). "A new generation, well-connected and inspired by universal values and global understanding, has created a new reality for us. We've found a new way for us to express our feelings and dreams. ...The regimes who invested billions of dollars in security systems collapsed and disappeared because of the voices of the people. They (the regime) tried to kill (the people), but the young people found something called Facebook and Twitter...and we found that all of these people in the streets are our reporters now."

Here's Khanfar:

(Photo of Khanfar, top, courtesy TED Conferences)