RSF managed to get a translation of the Chinese verdict and found the answer and the fault in the argument that "global communications ... will sweep away any regime which is not open, transparent and democratic." Yahoo, it was noted in the verdict, provided the authorities with his 'phone number and address. Handing out information that we assume to be secure is not high-tech magic. Some things — snitching, for instance — never change. Yahoo ratted the man out. There goes the idea of the Internet as a force against which no dictator can stand.
What are the major forces against the Internet as a high-pressure wash of freedom over the world? Number one and, in the end, always the prime mover in plays of power, is the self-interest of those who rule. That some rule from raw power or demagoguery and others from networks of the wealthy who act to maintain their wealth and will bow to the desires of the powerful because that makes money.
Thomas Friedman wrote, "Thanks to satellite dishes, the Internet and television we can now see through, hear through and look through almost every conceivable wall. ...no one owns the Internet, it is totally decentralized, no one can turn it off ...China's going to have a free press... Oh, China's leaders don't know it yet, but they are being pushed straight in that direction." Having witnessed people in Iran watching Baywatch he predicted that "within a few years, every citizen of the world will be able to comparison shop between his own... government and the one next door".
The New York Times just reported M.I.T and the University of Southampton (UK) announced they are opening a joint department for the study of "Web Science". It will be an academic program (but will probably have great impact on web businesses) investigating the social networks and human interactions that the Web has created.
The program director is to be Tim Berners-Lee who the Times reports "... invented the Web's basic software... An Oxford-educated Englishman, Mr. Berners-Lee is a senior researcher at M.I.T., a professor at the University of Southampton and the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, an Internet standards-setting organization." Steve Lohr at the Times elicited this from Professor Berners-Lee, “The Web isn’t about what you can do with computers..." “It’s people and, yes, they are connected by computers. But computer science, as the study of what happens in a computer, doesn’t tell you about what happens on the Web.”
Article comments
1 - Bliffle
Naaah. As a user of the internet (originally called ARPA when it was just mimeographed synopses and abstracts of various grad student papers mailed among grad schools), and a technical implementor of several proprietary networks such as IBM SNA and DECnet, I'm here to tell you that circumvention of attempts to control and stifle "internet" activity are doomed.
Why? Because the underlying technology is decentralized. Anyone with primitive internet TCP/IP on their PC is capable of hooking into an underground secure network through a shift-register modulated spread spectrum broadcast system which is not only data secure but undetectable! All one needs is a simple modulator/demodulator for an RF network that could, for example, exploit the 2.4ghz cordless phone band. Childs play.
2 - Deano
Ummmm...Wow. Is dilithim involved? Anywhere?