The Straits Times: Singapore Toxic e-waste

"This is the end of the road for the toxic end-product of the computer age.

In towns such as this one on China's south-eastern coast, vast quantities of obsolete electronics shipped in from the United States, Europe and Japan are piled in mountains of waste."

"The real costs are being borne by the people on the receiving end of the 'e-waste'. In towns along China's coast as well as in India and Pakistan, adults and children work for about US$1.20 (S$2.08) a day in unregulated and unsafe conditions."

redux [02.05.03]
News.Com HP: Don't trash that old computer

"The computer maker is testing a program that gives those who recycle their old computers, monitors, printers or other gear a coupon worth up to $50 for any purchase of $60 or more on HP's online store. Under a program announced nearly two years ago, HP charges anywhere from $17 to $31 to recycle products. The company says the coupon will offset the amount customers must pay for the service, which ensures none of the gear ends up in landfills.

The need for recycling is growing, particularly as nonprofit agencies become less willing to accept older gear, said Renee St. Denis, manager of HP's recycling effort. The problem of what to do with all this aging equipment has become a major issue facing the tech industry."

redux [01.26.03]
The Japan Times Chips with everything makes for a hi-tech mess

"So what are the environmental impacts of producing and using a 32-megabyte DRAM computer chip that weighs a mere 2 grams? The UNU team found that to make every one of the millions manufactured each year requires 32 kg of water, 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 700 grams of elemental gases (mainly nitrogen), and 72 grams of chemicals (hundreds are used, including lethal arsine gas and corrosive hydrogen fluoride).

To make matters worse, Williams believes his findings are conservative. "We think the real numbers may be twice that," he said, adding that rapid advances in technology aggravate the problem. "The fact that a chip has such a short lifespan, because the technology turns over so quickly, exacerbates the environmental impact.""

redux [01.10.03]
Wired News E-Waste: Dark Side of Digital Age

""The leadership continues to be by and large the Japanese companies, and the U.S. companies tend to be far behind," Smith said.

"A lot of (U.S. manufacturers') initiatives are piecemeal and not really designed to address the vast majority of consumer concerns," he added. "There is still an enormous amount of computer waste being exported to China.""

"The report also criticizes Dell's use of federal prison labor to recycle old computers, which it says exposes inmates to toxic chemicals without the same health and safety protections as workers at other facilities."

redux [12.03.02]
The Mercury News In switch, HP announces support for e-waste bill

"In a shift that will change how toxic electronic waste is recycled in California and possibly nationwide, Hewlett-Packard has said it will support state legislation to require PC manufacturers to bear the cost of computer disposal.

""The combined HP-Compaq company is the single largest manufacturer of PCs in the world. They are the linchpin for producer responsibility,'' said Smith, whose group helped expose the primitive recycling industry in China. ``The fact that they have changed their position vastly improves the likelihood we'll get a very good e-waste bill in the new session.""

redux [11.13.02]
Salon Silicon hogs

"If we all had to lug around the true environmental weights of the microchips in our iPods, cellphones or laptops, most of those portable gadgets would never make it off their docking stations, much less out the front door.

It takes 3.7 pounds of fossil fuels and other chemicals and 70.5 pounds of water to produce a single two-gram microchip, according to a forthcoming study in the Dec. 15 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society."

redux [05.22.02]
Wired News Tech Toxics' Tarnished Legacy

"California high-tech manufacturing companies are degrading the environment in developing countries, a new research report confirms.

Case studies done in Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Thailand, and Costa Rica by the California Global Corporate Accountability Project document water pollution and inadquate waste management resulting from component production."

redux [04.06.02]
NPR: All Things Considered Activists Push for Safer E-Recycling

"Americans will throw out about 10 million old computers this year. About two-thirds of these will be shipped to Asia for dismantling by rural villagers. The computers all contain mercury and lead, and the resulting toxic waste has become a threat to villagers' health and environment.

"A coalition of activists and lawmakers has been working to improve the situation, and in recent weeks they've gotten a signed pledge from electronic manufacturers in the United States to consider a new solution."

Mother Jones Growing Health Problems Among Semiconductor Workers

"Workers in Silicon Valley's semiconductor plants toil in head-to-toe protective clothing designed to keep impurities from contaminating the microchips. But Mother Jones magazine reports that the growing incidence of health problems among these workers suggests that it is they who need protection. At least 250 workers have filed lawsuits against high-tech companies, charging that the toxic soup of chemicals in production areas has triggered high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer."

redux [05.04.00]
San Francisco Bay Guardian Silicon Hell

"Behind the well-paid geeks in cubicles and the sharp-dressed entrepreneurs is an industry that consumes as many resources, uses as many lethal chemicals, and generates as much toxic waste as some of the worst culprits of the pre-Internet age. And both industry workers and the people who live near the plants are feeling the effects: the toxins damage aquatic life in the bay, poison drinking water, and, increasing evidence suggests, kill high-tech industry workers.

While the federal government, local agencies, and hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents and company workers are dealing with the computer industry's mess here in America, the same (or worse) problems are spreading worldwide."

Reason Creation Myths

"Greene was not referring to international terrorism. "The most insidious virus in our midst," he said sternly, "is the illegal downloading of music on the Net."

Greene’s sermon may have been a bit overwrought, but he’s not alone in his fears. During the last decade, the captains of many industries -- music, movies, publishing, software, pharmaceuticals -- have railed against the "piracy" of their profits."

"How does an economy best promote innovation? Do patents and copyrights nurture or stifle it? Have we gone too far in protecting intellectual property?"

International Herald Tribute Pop stars learn to live with pirates

"Record companies say that what piracy has really done in China is to cause fundamental shifts in the way the country’s music industry operates. It has simply forced Wang and his fellow stars to change the way they live, work and play. ‘‘There is no income from the royalties, so artists in China record single songs for radio play instead of albums for consumers,’’ said Lachie Rutherford, the president of Warner Music Asia-Pacific. ‘‘Stars need to look elsewhere to finance the rock-star lifestyle.’’"

"‘‘China is the ultimate example of industrial-scale piracy and its impact,’’ Berman said. ‘‘The business model for the record industry worldwide is moving toward resembling what we see in China today.’’ Alternative sources of income tapped by top Chinese stars include paid appearances, sponsorship deals and extended concert tours through the nation’s vast hinterland."

redux [10.23.02]
USA Today Music industry spins falsehood

"On the first day I posted downloadable music, my merchandise sales tripled, and they have stayed that way ever since. I'm not about to become a zillionaire as a result, but I am making more money. At a time when radio playlists are tighter and any kind of exposure is hard to come by, 365,000 copies of my work now will be heard. Even if only 3% of those people come to concerts or buy my CDs, I've gained about 10,000 new fans this year.

That's how artists become successful: exposure. Without exposure, no one comes to shows, and no one buys CDs. After 37 years as a recording artist, when people write to tell me that they came to my concert because they downloaded a song and got curious, I am thrilled."

redux [04.17.02]
SFGate New musical acts get lift from Internet

""Our data show that the dominance of a few music superstars is decreasing, and their hold on music sales is slipping," said Sudip Bhattacharjee of the University of Connecticut's School of Business. "This is definitely good news for up-and-coming artists and groups, who now have a better chance at chart success because of (new) technologies" such as programs that allow users to download songs for free from the Internet."

""Superstars just don't have the sustaining power they used to," said Gopal, who headed the research team. "They get knocked off by new artists who get sampled over the Internet.""

redux [03.18.02]
Matt Haughey The future of music

"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."

"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."

redux [12.18.01]
Salon Don't steal music, pretty please

"Indeed, the pointless attempt to control copyrighted data every step of the way from musician's voice to listener's ear is the biggest roadblock to success for online music. Just as HBO doesn't try to stop you from taping its movies, so music sellers need to let go and trust their customers. Remove the incentives for people to steal, rather than imposing more technology that treats customers as would-be shoplifters. Even former BMG head Strauss Zelnick, who says he has no problem throwing big-time bootleggers in jail, agrees the industry's challenge is to come up with an attractive alternative to Aimster and its ilk. "We need to give consumers a service they want, at a price they're willing to pay," he told me in an interview this summer. "People don't like to think of themselves as criminals." But ironically, the more anti-theft hurdles crammed into the legal products, the more attractive the pirate alternatives become."

redux [07.21.00]
News.Com Study: Napster users buy more music

"Jupiter said it surveyed more than 2,200 online music fans about whether the money they spent on music purchases had increased, decreased or remained the same since they began visiting music destinations on the Web. People between the ages of 18 to 24 who spend less than $20 on music within a three-month period indicated that they were likely to remain at a constant purchasing level despite online music use. All other groups said they had increased spending as a result of online music use, Jupiter reported."

redux [05.02.00]
Infoworld Napster sends a message to music industry: 'Your customers aren't happy'

""The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway.

There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers.

And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."

The New York Times How the Protesters Mobilized
[requires 'free' registration]

"The protests had no single identified leader and no central headquarters. Social theorists have a name for these types of decentralized networks: heterarchies. In contrast to hierarchies, with top-down structures, heterarchies are made up of previously isolated groups that can connect to one another and coordinate.

Because no central decision-making authority exists, protests can be localized and can appeal to new groups and individuals who don't live in areas where social protest information would typically reach."

"Military theorists are fond of saying that future warfare will revolve around social and communication networks. Antiwar groups have found that this is true for their work as well."

redux [01.03.03]
The Globe and Mail In South Korea, it's the mouse that roars

"The winning candidate in last week's South Korean presidential election had little need for mass rallies or traditional campaign tactics.

When Roh Moo-hyun's organizers wanted supporters to vote on election day, they simply pressed a few computer keys. Text messages flashed to the cellphones of almost 800,000 people, urging them to go to the polls."

"With the world's highest penetration of high-speed and mobile Internet services, South Korea is at the cutting edge of technology that is transforming the political system, making it more open and democratic. It could be a preview of the shape of Western democracy."

redux [05.10.01]
First Monday The Impact of the Internet on Myanmar

"In the present paper, I explore how the Internet has affected the flow of information between in and outside Myanmar (Burma). I show that there is a strong difference between the way information was presented before and after the introduction of the World Wide Web."

"In my study, I examine two political events in Myanmar connected to student uprisings, in the hope of documenting how the Internet - as an easily researched symbol of modern communications - may be affecting the political strategies of one of the last isolated states."

redux [01.20.01]
The Guardian Unlimited Filipinos rally to oust the president: C U @ the revolution

"Millions of ordinary Filipinos, communicating with each other via mobile phone text messages, swarmed on to the streets of the capital, Manila, in scenes reminiscent of the 1986 uprising which ousted the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos."

"Most people heard about the planned swearing-in of Ms Arroyo via the text messages, the same means that galvanised a spontaneous uprising on Tuesday evening, when Mr Estrada's impeachment trial collapsed after he bullied and bribed senators to block the admission of vital evidence."

"The text message doing the rounds late last night said it all: "I guess we've won again."

redux [11.29.00]
NPR: Morning Edition Cell Phone Rally

""NPR's Eric Weiner reports on the latest in the effort to unseat Philippine president Joseph Estrada. Filipinos send 30 million cell phone "text messages" daily- more than anywhere else in the world. Activists are using the technology to organize rallies and respond instantly to the latest corruption charges. (5:19)""

redux [07.07.00]
The New York Times Manila's Talk of the Town Is Text Messaging
[requires 'free' registration]

"Muslim insurgents battling Philippine troops in the south have a new weapon. When the shelling and gunfire let up, they send a barrage of scathing insults to Manila's forces by cell phone.

"There is a text war among the MILF and our forces," said Brig. Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr., referring to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two rebel groups fighting for an independent state. "Our soldiers are texting insults to the MILF. And the MILF are sending the insults back." ."

"Sending e-mail on mobile phones, has also taken off in richer parts of the world: Europe, especially in Scandinavia, and in Japan and other East Asian countries, particularly among teen-agers. But in the Philippines, where incomes are far lower, it is even more popular. And it has spawned an entire subculture, complete with its own vocabulary, etiquette and tactical uses. It has become particularly popular here, in large part because text messaging is cheap while traditional telephone service is spotty and Internet access by computer is expensive."

Washington Post Engineers' E-mails Warned NASA Downplaying Shuttle Problems

"In one e-mail sent three days before the shuttle's Feb. 1 disintegration as it hit the Earth's atmosphere, a Langley engineer complained that those managing Columbia's flight had chosen not to make simple studies to clarify landing risks and were treating such information "like the plague."

The engineer, Robert Daugherty, also said he understood NASA engineers at flight headquarters in Texas had privately estimated its safety during landing was "survivable but marginal.""

redux [02.01.03]
The New York Times Speed Makes Space Flight Very Risky, Experts Say
[requires 'free' registration]

"A success rate of about 95 percent is more typical of the trade, Dr. Postol said. With two catastrophic failures in 113 flights, for a 98.2 percent success rate, the shuttle program is not looking much different -- for sound physical reasons, he said.

"Capt. Bill Readdy, associate administrator for space flight and a former astronaut, said at a news conference yesterday afternoon: "Today was a very stark reminder that this is a very risky endeavor, pushing back the frontiers in outer space. And after 113 flights, unfortunately, people have a tendency to look at it as something that is more or less routine. Well I can assure you it is not.""

The Guardian Unlimited Nasa chiefs 'repeatedly ignored' safety warnings

"Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former Nasa engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed.

In a letter to the White House, Don Nelson, who served with Nasa for 36 years until he retired in 1999, wrote to President George W. Bush warning that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'."

Richard Feynman Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle

"If a reasonable launch schedule is to be maintained, engineering often cannot be done fast enough to keep up with the expectations of originally conservative certification criteria designed to guarantee a very safe vehicle. In these situations, subtly, and often with apparently logical arguments, the criteria are altered so that flights may still be certified in time. They therefore fly in a relatively unsafe condition, with a chance of failure of the order of a percent (it is difficult to be more accurate).

Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers."

redux [02.06.03]
Reason The Limits of Complexity

"The week has brought a painful reminder of the limits of complex systems and human fallibility."

"So there is the crux of the matter, across shuttle, software, and oil truck. At what point does complexity make a system more prone to break, rather than less? Can added cost always justify greater reliability? How do we know when the risk of something going wrong is too great?

If in answering such questions you require or assume perfection, something might go very wrong indeed."

Houston Chronicle 10 years after Challenger, NASA feels shuttle safety never better

"In 1988, SAIC evaluated the launch risk for NASA relying primarily on factors applicable during the shuttle's pre-Challenger era, including the flawed solid rocket booster. The assessment produced a range of risk with a mean probability of a shuttle loss at one in every 78 launches.

The risk mean for a shuttle loss during the liftoff improved to one in every 248 ascents when the assessment was repeated this year and the shuttle's post-Challenger actual track record was factored into the calculations.

The Guardian 'McFrankenstein' returns to haunt fast food chain in new court action

"Judge Robert Sweet was bluntly dismissive of the original complaint last month brought on behalf of two children from the Bronx.

But he left the door open for potential litigants if it could be proved there are dangers in eating McDonald's food that are not commonly known. He said it could be argued that Chicken McNuggets, instead of being simply chicken fried in a pan, are a "McFrankenstein creation of various elements"."

redux [07.26.02]
USA Today Lawsuit: Fast food chains caused obesity

"A man sued four leading fast food chains, claiming he became obese and suffered from other serious health problems from eating their fatty cuisine."

""They said '100% beef.' I thought that meant it was good for you," Barber told Newsday. "I thought the food was OK."

"Those people in the advertisements don't really tell you what's in the food," he said. "It's all fat, fat and more fat. Now I'm obese.""

Common Dreams Fast Food Nation: An Appetite for Litigation

"John Banzhaf likes to pose this challenge to students who enroll in his graduate class on legal activism at George Washington University, in Washington, DC. Think of something that really irritates you or smacks of obvious civil injustice, he tells them. Then think of a way of using the law to right the wrong and seek redress.

In other words, as Professor Banzhaf himself puts it with the freewheeling candor we have come to expect from both heroes and villains in the American legal system, let's sue the bastards."

ABC News Obsessed by Fast Food

"Residents of the United States spend more on fast food a year than they do movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and records combined. Americans shelled out more than $110 billion on burgers, fried chicken, and the like in 2000, compared with $6 billion in 1970."

""Fast food is really moving into schools, which is horrible, because eating habits are formed when you're young, so if you get fat then, you've started a lifelong battle," Schlosser said."

American Psychological Association Fast-food culture serves up super-size Americans

""It's important for us to look at this from a public health point-of-view, where we're not so concerned with how overweight an individual is, but how overweight the population is," said Brownell. "Genetics is what permits the problem to occur, but environment is what drives it."

Of particular concern to Brownell is America's passive acceptance of unhealthy food. Americans fail to recognize, for example, the possible damage done by such fast-food icons as Ronald McDonald. "We take Joe Camel off the billboard because it is marketing bad products to our children, but Ronald McDonald is considered cute," said Brownell. "How different are they in their impact, in what they're trying to get kids to do?""

The New York Times No Accounting for Mouthfeel
[requires 'free' registration]

"In the opening pages of ''Fast Food Nation,'' Eric Schlosser makes a series of observations about McDonald's. The company operates about 28,000 restaurants around the world. It's the nation's biggest buyer of beef, pork and potatoes, and the world's biggest owner of retail property. The company is one of the country's top toy distributors and its largest private operator of playgrounds. Ninety-six percent of American schoolchildren can identify Ronald McDonald. Roughly one of every eight workers in the United States has done time at the chain. The McDonald's brand is the most famous, and the most heavily promoted, on the planet. ''The Golden Arches,'' Schlosser says, ''are now more widely recognized than the Christian cross.'' Of course, McDonald's isn't alone. ''The whole experience of buying fast food,'' he writes, ''has become so routine, so thoroughly unexceptional and mundane, that it is now taken for granted, like brushing your teeth or stopping for a red light.''"

NPR: Talk of the Nation The Internet and Authoritarian Regimes

"It's easy to assume that the Internet is a friend of democracy and a facilitator of the free flow of ideas. Ronald Reagan once said, "The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip." Shanthi Kalathil wasn't so convinced. She and fellow researcher Taylor Boas studied the effect of the Internet on eight authoritarian regimes, and what they found challenges conventional wisdom. Kalathil joins guest host Lynn Neary to discuss their findings."

redux [02.03.03]
The Mercury News Vietnam wrestles with dilemma in Internet growth

"Plans are in motion to quadruple the current number of Internet users to four million by 2005 and the country's fledgling information technology sector will get injections of $100 million over the next two years, an initial investment aimed at harnessing the Internet's economic potential.

Yet even as it encourages Internet industry growth with tax breaks and other IT-friendly policies, Vietnam has tightened control over networked information. Web sites with pornography, violence, and in particular, criticism of Vietnam's communist, one-party system are all deemed ``poisonous and harmful.'' The government blocks access to many."

redux [01.25.03]
The Economist Caught in the net

"IF THE internet will force difficult changes on democracies by handing power to individual citizens, it seems reasonable to believe that it will have a devastating impact on dictatorships. But it is not impossible that instead of undermining repressive regimes, the internet could become the most effective tool of social control that autocratic rulers have ever wielded."

"As more human interactions are conducted and recorded electronically, as the ability to analyse databases grows and as video and other offline surveillance technologies become cheaper and more effective, it will become ever easier for authoritarian governments to set up systems of widespread surveillance. George Orwell's Big Brother of "1984" might yet become a reality, a few decades later than he expected."

redux [01.09.03]
First Monday Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule

"In today's networked, globalized world, many presume that the Internet will pose a grave threat to authoritarian regimes. Such has been the power of this conventional wisdom that it remains for the most part unchallenged, and largely unexamined.

A new book, Open Networks, Closed Regimes, offers the most comprehensive and thought-provoking work on this subject to date. Authors Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas trace Internet use in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries: China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. They discover that authoritarian governments, far from fearing the information age, have chosen to direct Internet development in ways that bolster the state. At the same time, many regimes are struggling to cope with the potent challenges posed by new technologies. The authors encourage policy makers in the U.S. and other industrialized democracies to promote specific Internet-based initiatives that foster political liberalization, rather than perpetuating the myth of the Internet as an unstoppable "virus of freedom.""

redux [09.30.02]
SiliconValley.Com Internet arrives in Iraq

"After resisting the Internet as a freewheeling tool of globalization and political anarchy for a decade, Saddam Hussein's government has cautiously embraced it.

Internet cafes have sprung up all over Baghdad in recent months, and even in smaller cities such as Karbala, a religiously conservative city 75 miles southwest of the capital. Just last month, the government took another major step, permitting some citizens to have Internet connections at home

Iraqis can now surf the Web and send e-mail to their hearts' content -- as long as they do it via www.uruklink.net, the government-controlled service provider monitored by Saddam's agents."

redux [08.29.02]
The New York Times Saudi Censorship of Web Ranges Far Beyond Tenets of Islam, Study Finds
[requires 'free' registration]

"THE Saudi government is censoring public Internet access to a degree that goes significantly but haphazardly beyond its stated central goal of blocking sexually explicit content that violates the values of Islam, according to a recent study by Harvard Law School researchers.

The study's detailed list of blocked sites offers a glimpse into the areas that the Saudi government has deemed most troubling. Among them are sites related to pornography, women's rights, gays and lesbians, non-Islamic religions and criticism of political restrictions. Many humor and entertainment sites have also been blocked."

The device has been the kind of purchase people imagined someone else might enjoy."

redux [06.25.02]
News.Com Russia poised to restrict Net activities

""This version of the bill still allows the ability to prevent Internet activities without any necessity," said Kovalev, a 72-year old civil libertarian and member of the liberal "soyuz peravikh sil" faction.

Kovalev cited the portion of the bill that says it is "forbidden to use computer networks for extremism" and pledges a vague punishment that may "take into consideration" existing Russian criminal laws."

Wired News Egyptians Flock to New Net Plan

"Unlike the less-populated but richer countries Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which only last year overtook Egypt as having the largest Arab Internet population, Egypt is not trying to restrict the Internet.

But security police are monitoring chat rooms and local sites deemed immoral or damaging to the state or religion have been shut down. A few people have been imprisoned for soliciting sex on the Net."

redux [06.06.02]
BBC China loses grip on internet

""Without the internet the story may still have got out," said Mr Zheng. "With so many people killed it would have been hard to keep it a secret for ever, but it would have been much more difficult."

The internet is changing China in subtle but profound ways. Information is now being spread and exchanged in ways unthinkable just a few years ago.

The Chinese state's once total control on information has been broken and hard as it may try it has little hope of regaining that control."

redux [04.16.02]
Online Journalism Review Censorship Wins Out

"A decade or so ago, it was all clear: the Internet was believed to be such a revolutionary new medium, so inherently empowering and democratizing, that old authoritarian regimes would crumble before it. What we've learned in the intervening years is that the Internet does not inevitably lead to democracy any more than it inevitably leads to great wealth.

The idea that the Internet itself is a threat to authoritarian regimes was a bit of delusional post-Cold War optimism."

redux [03.21.02]
Salon Will the Net save China?

"Mao once said, "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun." The entrepreneurs in China Dawn seem to want to change the last phrase to "ISP access."

But their enthusiasm betrays a streak of naivete. As Tiananmen so amply demonstrated, in China today, political power still grows from the barrel of a gun. And the prediction that the rise of the Internet will liberate Chinese from authoritarian rule is far from certain."

South China Morning Post Who let the blogs out?

"One notable loophole in the content watch list are weblogs. Weblogs are content websites maintained by ordinary users that can act as introspective online diaries, soapboxes to rant opinions, and a vehicle guide the horde of Internet users to swarm to other obscure links to be found on the net. They are easy to update, cheap to maintain, and difficult to block because so many new ones appear each day. They utilize a client relationship with a server and can be updated with a simple browser."

The bureaucrats and censors in China who block and monitor websites will be hard pressed to try and control the future flow of weblogs both in and out of China due to the number and diversity of this new information platform. Having met actual Internet content censors from China, they are decent people but come from a different time and different place in terms of technology. They don't really get it yet since weblogs remain a concept difficult for them to understand for now."

redux [08.08.01]
First Monday The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution

"It is widely believed that the Internet poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. But political science scholarship has provided little support for this conventional wisdom, and a number of case studies from around the world show that authoritarian regimes are finding ways to control and counter the political impact of Internet use. While the long-term political impact of the Internet remains an open question, we argue that these strategies for control may continue to be viable in the short to medium term."

"In this paper we illustrate how two authoritarian regimes, China and Cuba, are maintainng control over the Internet's political impact through different combinations of reactive and proactive strategies. These cases illustrate that, contrary to assumptions, different types of authoritarian regimes may be able to control and profit from the Internet. Examining the experiences of these two countries may help to shed light on other authoritarian regimes' strategies for Internet development, as well as help to develop generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule."

redux [06.19.01]
Ananova Political heavyweight warns of 'web threat to democracy'

"Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister has warned the internet threatens democracy and people's sense of patriotism.

Lee Hsien Loong says governments must find new ways to build a consensus on national issues and strengthen national identities."

"The internet "opens up societies and helps individuals link up with like-minded souls anywhere in cyberspace," he said.

But it "may weaken the bonds of place and circumstance that have always tied citizens to their home and nation," he added."

redux [10.26.00]
Center for Strategic and International Studies Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age

"The world is changing fundamentally. Images and information respect neither time nor borders. Hierarchy is giving way to networking. Openness is crowding out secrecy and exclusivity. Ideas and capital move swiftly and unimpeded across a global network of governments, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. In this world of instantaneous information, traditional diplomacy struggles to sustain its relevance."

"Nations once connected by foreign ministries and traders are now linked through millions of individuals by fiber optics, satellite, wireless, and cable in a complex network without central control. The Internet, with 100 million users today, will reach one billion people by 2005 and will be available to half the world's population by 2010. The network will become the central nervous system of international relations."

redux [10.10.00]
MediaChannel.Org A Tower Aflame: Media, Metaphor and Revolution

"Metaphors, symbols and sayings are mighty mind-setters. They captivate our minds and focus our attention to one main point, effectively excluding others. Putin used the burning of the Ostankino television tower, once hailed as a symbol of Soviet supremacy, as a metaphor for the desperate economic need of Russia. The global media played along with this tune, once again showcasing images of Russia's decay. But there is another largely untold story to be extracted from Putin's metaphor: TV towers are more than symbols - indeed they are very concrete centers of mind control, distributing the flow of information and entertainment."

"Who chose the crumbling Berlin Wall as the icon and metaphor for the breakdown of communism and the end of the Cold War? Wouldn't a TV tower in flames be more accurate? It wasn't about the free flow of capital. It was about the free flow of information."