Monday, December 11, 2006
China and Google In a way, Dan Gilmor’s discussion of China’s crackdown on internet accessibility touches on many of the themes of this course. If you were a young Chinese teenager in 2003, you may have groaned when that annoying “Page Cannot Be Displayed” banner appeared in place of your favorite website. That year, China had flipped the switch on thousands of politically sensitive websites, establishing what’s known as "the Great Firewall of China" (read the terrific NYT Mag article). Early this year, Google launched a new Chinese version of their popular search engine with a built-in blacklist of keywords like “democracy” or “human rights” (profit-seeker model of the Media at work). Seriously, I invite you to type in the words “Tiananmen Square”, first on Google.cn, then on Google.com, and compare the difference. After Google’s recent acquisition of YouTube, I wouldn’t be surprised if that clip we watched in the beginning of the semester of the student protest is blocked also.
Is the Chinese government delusional, or just out of touch? If President Hu Jintao had read the first ten chapters of Dan Gilmor’s book, he’d recognize the futility of his efforts. The collective ingenuity of mankind hungry for information is practically unstoppable. If a computer hacker in Sweden can crack a company code, then surely millions of Chinese will find their way around the Great Firewall’s ramparts. Let’s say I threw in one line about Tiananmen on a Yao Ming message board. Even better, let’s say I repeated my comment on every single Yao Ming message board in the country (an ambitious task, no doubt). Would the government have the courage to firewall Yao Ming from China?
Notwithstanding devious tactics, the Net’s democratizing power is just as threatening to Communist rule. Millions of Chinese can now discover new information outside of the State-controlled schoolhouse. Tiananmen Square might be off the list, but the West’s rich traditions of liberty and hope permeate everything we read and see. How can you read of a new breakthrough in cancer research and not marvel at how what people can accomplish under a democracy? Last I’ve checked, authoritative information concerning the Orange and the Rose Revolutions are allowed on Google.cn. How can you learn of a popular uprising and not be convinced of man’s capacity for change?
Try as they might, I’m sure that China will lose its battle against New Media, just as the Music and Movie Industry will ultimately succumb to Peer-to-Peer technology. The diffusion of ideas brought about by the Net is the death knell for authoritarian regimes everywhere.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Strength in Numbers
Scrolling through the class blogs, I came across a particularly trenchant blog entry by The New England Patriot. He claims that someday soon the master bloggers of the Net will join the ranks of mainstream Media, trading in their independence for greater visibility and credibility in an otherwise chaotic environment.
My hope is that this never comes to pass. Blogs of all sizes and influence draw their strength from the democratic outpouring of millions of wired people. A blog is only as good as the comments that accompany it. Notwithstanding the growing presence of trolls, pesky miscreants that disrupt online discourse with non-constructive input, participation is a key ingredient to a blog's success. If certain blogs ever attained MSM status, the blogging community as a whole will shrink. Why start a blog if people are going to read the DailyKos anyway?
I can empathize with the effort to establish trust and journalistic integrity on the Net. But I am cautious to endorse any policy or course of events that will subject the Net to the same hierarchical structures as found on the radio and television. To me, this short-term gain cannot outweigh the inevitable chill it will place on creative blogging. Lets keep growing, even at the expense of some journalistic integrity.
Scrolling through the class blogs, I came across a particularly trenchant blog entry by The New England Patriot. He claims that someday soon the master bloggers of the Net will join the ranks of mainstream Media, trading in their independence for greater visibility and credibility in an otherwise chaotic environment.
My hope is that this never comes to pass. Blogs of all sizes and influence draw their strength from the democratic outpouring of millions of wired people. A blog is only as good as the comments that accompany it. Notwithstanding the growing presence of trolls, pesky miscreants that disrupt online discourse with non-constructive input, participation is a key ingredient to a blog's success. If certain blogs ever attained MSM status, the blogging community as a whole will shrink. Why start a blog if people are going to read the DailyKos anyway?
I can empathize with the effort to establish trust and journalistic integrity on the Net. But I am cautious to endorse any policy or course of events that will subject the Net to the same hierarchical structures as found on the radio and television. To me, this short-term gain cannot outweigh the inevitable chill it will place on creative blogging. Lets keep growing, even at the expense of some journalistic integrity.
