A short geo-technical quiz to get the ball rolling: Is Chinese blockage of news sites and Twitter on the 20th anniversary of the events at Tiananmen Square a sign of:
A) Cynical machinations of a despotic regime intent on control, denial, and misinformation?
B) A chance for well-meaning Occidentals and political opportunists to demonstrate naïveté and polarize the situation further?
C) Neither a hindrance nor a help to the average Chinese Web surfer who's well versed in proxies and other firewall circumvention techniques?
D) All of the above?
Let's clear the decks on one issue: This solemn occasion is a disturbing reminder to all who enjoy freedom of the price paid by those who sought to do the same. A couple blogs on Internet Evolution today point this out -- one from IBM's Todd Watson, another by Matthew Ingram.
Watson describes from first-hand experience the blankness that greets questions about Tiananmen Square in China -- officially, it's a non-issue. Never happened. Ingram describes the widening of controls and restrictions in the last several days to keep official mentions out of the mainstream media and off Websites.
This is bad. This is wrong. This is how you get branded an enemy of freedom by the international community. And this is also what China has done for a really long time, as the world got to see in time-delayed, high-def glory during last summer's Olympic Games.
Nine months later, we can see it was just wishful thinking that that sort of exposure might have permanently cracked open the doors of free thinking and open exchange of ideas, images, and opinions. The Chinese government is simply reverting to type -- this time, though, there's no IOC or international broadcasters and journalists to placate.
None of this is to excuse blocking Twitter, Google, or big chunks of the Chinese blogosphere. But what it does say is that this is all perfectly consistent with the Chinese modus operandi. And it was as foreseeable as the inevitable indignant responses from around the world. The Chinese authorities appear pretty impervious to shame or embarrassment. And, as I've asked here before, what superpower doesn't have a lot to answer for where absolute freedom's concerned?
A little taste of capitalism hasn't softened up the Chinese stance much where human rights are concerned. Hosting an international sporting event didn't offer much leverage on the freedom front, and despite the plentiful ways to circumvent Chinese firewalls, the Internet hasn't ushered in a new era of freedom for 1.3 billion people. Twittered protests and online hand-wringing seem a bit gratuitous, but they may be all we have in this impasse that isn't likely to end anytime soon.
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what does science have to do with historical events and how we remember them. How do you suppose young Americans found out about D-Day before cable television or the Internet? Our schools, our parents, our libraries and friends instilled in us what we needed to grow up understanding and believing in freedom. Granted, today more than just a few people get everything they know off the Internet. But somehow I doubt 1.3 billion people in China depend on the Internet to tell them they are being deprived of their basic freedoms.
Revolutions to cast off oppressive leaders have never required the Internet for assistance even once in the history of mankind. Somehow, we managed to do it despite our lack of technology. I have no doubt that should another revolution occur the Internet, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web X.0, will provide an interesting means of observation for those of us not involved. But probably will not have anything to do with organizing or implementing said revolution. There's just not enough security to carry out an operation of that magnitude. Believe me, when the bullets start to fly no one will have time to be twittering about it, until it is over.
Tiananmen Square was not the start of a Chinese political revolution. It was only one man and his courage. 20 years has gone by and that's just too long in the past to become an influence for what the rest of the world is hoping will happen. Tiananmen Square was not equal to "Lexington and Concord", or the "Boston massacre"of the American Revolution. Somehow, "the shot heard round the world" managed to occur without the Internet.
We're clearly talking right past each other, Paul. You've missed my points a couple times here -- it's not either/or heart/mind -- you can keep memory alive in either, regardless of any action a government or a mere mortal might make to try and disrupt that.
It seems you have to make further clarification to your earlier statement!! So which of the two does the remebering,the brain or the heart? According to your earlier statement, you mentioned that our hearts have elastic cellular memory, so one can inferred that you are saying our hearts do the remebering.
My point basically was trying to defend the importance of commemorating certain worthwhile events that have shapen our world.My earlier comments were not in anyway suggesting that we will loose focus or the importance of these historic days without a commemorative coverage. Think of the generations that never witnessed some of these historic events and who may relied on these TV commemorative coverages to get a real' feel' of the immense sacrifices made in our fight against evil. Why do you think Chinese government placed a ban on commemorating the 20th anniversary of Tinamen Square? They preety much know the impact it would have on the minds and hearts pof ordinary chinese.
Paul: There are hearts, and there are brains. Airline safety promos are not for our hearts (but they are a legal requirement for common carrier operation).
I'm delighted and not at all surprised to read you derive great pleasure and rewards from D-Day programming. But your interesting interpretation of what I wrote jumps the tracks pretty spectacularly from there. This is also not surprising.
If the government, in its unfailing wisdom, decided to ban all D-Day coverage (like the Chinese did with Twitter, Yahoo, etc.), would you somehow "forget" D-Day? Would you be unable to summon any of the feelings evoked by those who sacrificed that day? Would your ideas and ideals around freedom vanish because the government won't broadcast them or decided you couldn't watch them?
Of course not.
We now return to the History Channel's regular programming...
Thanks for your comments!! We can forgive China and others since we our expectattions of them with regrds to human rights is so abysmally low. But how about our so called tag "internet" president? The man who promised to run his administration as open as the internet he ahd used to siphon millions of campaign funds? Look at a bill called " The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009
" that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States".
Look at the despicable state of a nation call Somalia!! Since the withdrawal of the U.S. in the U.N. led peace mission, a nation grip and rule by anarchy has been in existence for almost two decades now. Somalia in a dire need of help but who has the courage and wherewhithal to come to their rescue!!!
Great comments! We need more people like you expressing your viewpoints and telling your own personal stories of oppression, war and injustice (referencing the tragedies in Sierra Leone).
MANY...Americans do not, STILL, realize how good they (had?) have it when it comes to the freedoms that they enjoy! Now to see the political pendulum swing so sharply toward a “socialist” direction, dare I say toward (hey, a revolution starts with one step) a Chinese form of a state run, state controlled system, is truly mind boggling.
As far as "...the Internet hasn't ushered in a new era of freedom for 1.3 billion people." Technology can do a lot to help the cause, but it cannot topple oppression by itself. Revolution happened in the Soviet Union with help from khozraschet. But with the very powerful capitalist economic engine in China, freedom and human rights may be a long, oppressive road
Thanks for the clarification. I should have been more forhtright in my earlier comment. By young democracies, i was referring to my country and others who are relatively new to this democracy thing. M y point was that even young democracies like that in my country is now electing people based on real achievement merited rather than on some fictional, rhetorical eloquence. Those of when politicians could just come and wave a magic wand with aplomp oratory is now a thing of by-gone years.
I very much share your view and don't really see the need for any apology on your part. But we all do see this coming in the Fall but i guess the 52% are now getting a just return. It is a real sad day when the perpetrator are being indirectly applauded and the brave who have stand with the oppressed nations of the world over the years is now been made to look like a war-monger!!
Sometimes I think you just do this to see what kind of response you are going to get.
I did not elect him. I was part of the 48% that saw he is "a mile wide and an inch thin"
Don't run on a platform and then revert to the very platform you criticized. As President you are charged with doing what is right, not what is popular.
This "young democracy" as you put it has shed more blood, on more foreign lands to promote freedom than any other democracy and does not need to apologize for anything.
Well he is just embarking on fulfing the issues for which you elected him. My guess is his campaign message for 2012 will simply be that he has now make America looks very favorably in the eyes of the world. For him just doing that would worth giving him a second term. Even young democraices like us do elected people based on their performance in public life!!
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If you think parasites and other simple life-forms can't thrive in the most basic of media, you haven't looked in my compost pail lately. So leave it to spammers to find the fresh fuel from social networks to ply their junky trade.
For those eight and a half minutes every day not taken up by editing, hosting a 6DEE lecture, or sucking up to encouraging someone to appear on IE Radio, I try to do some actual pulse-taking to see what's going on across the great big blogosphere. And a trio of vendor studies, all released in the last few weeks, offer an interesting composite of the enterprise security landscape.
The Chinese market is looking a lot less like the clockworks of state-sponsored planning and carefully controlled growth and a lot more positively, well... Occidental. And no, I'm not referring to nine-hour traffic jams in and out of Beijing, but rather the increasing litigiousness of Chinese search leader Baidu Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU).
"Google TV plan is causing jitters in Hollywood," proclaimed the front page of the Los Angeles Times today. It seems the suits in Tinseltown are worried that television (and its torrent of advertising revenue) will end up passing the same way as the recording industry and newspaper publishers: left in the dust by the Internet's new business model.
In the same week that Microsoft had its biggest Patch Tuesday ever (14 bulletins and 34 vulnerabilities affecting Windows, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, SQL, and Silverlight) and a week after 100 million Facebook accounts were exposed, it seems somehow fitting that our 60 Days of Executive Education lecture series turns today to cloud security.
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Cisco's UCS and IBM's zEnterprise have upped the ante for virtualization and 21st century computing. In the future, look for integration of disparate operating systems at the firmware level, self-healing architectures, and workload optimization across entire data centers.
What kinds of companies are doing the most innovation in the data center? Turns out it's midtier enterprises that are taking the "Just Right" approach.
E-discovery is the requirement to make available all digital information related to, and in conjunction with, a legal proceeding. An appeals court ruled recently to limit the scope of e-discovery searches, which gives corporate counsel and IT executives a bit more power over the e-discovery process.
The release of Microsoft's newest OS raises the question of the company's relevance in an era when Google dominates applications and search, and Apple runs circles around Redmond with its gadgets and user interfaces.
Earlier this year, Heartland Payment Systems was breached by Russian hackers who had also hit 300 other financial institutions. The scope of the Russian operation is mind-blowing and points to a new era in cyber attacks.
Cyber Warfare may be the next frontier for tactical hacking. It has already reared its head in Estonia, Russia, and Georgia, and some say it has been used by North Korea, China, and other world powers. The implications and the potential are both fascinating and scary.
High on the list of desired improvements from the mobile industry are: shared digital storage for the Internet; phone capability across borders; reduced electro-magnetic radiation; and rewards-based service plans.
Because 25% to 45% of broadband cost is due to sales and marketing, we could reduce our broadband prices by eliminating advertising and promotional spending by providers.
The next edition of one of the greatest English language reference books, the "Oxford English Dictionary," might not be published in paper. Bibliophiles might mourn, but should they?
RIM is giving in to demands by India to snoop on encrypted BlackBerry data. It's time to develop cheap or free encryption software for BlackBerrys and other cellular phones.
Nielsen’s recent numbers on the increasing use of texting bode well for enterprise networks. Shunning the phone in favor of text messaging could mean reducing bandwidth.
Two studios have filed suit against an ad broker for placing ads to help monetize P2P sites suspected of copyright infringement. That's taking a dangerous step toward what might be a worthy goal.
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