ENTERING THE BLOGOSPHERE

(From KJ #61)


Bored with the banality of fiction? Tired of dumb movies and even stupider “reality” programming? Sick of being conned by admen, lied to by the news, of being treated as a submissive consumer of corporate media?

Been entertained to death?

Maybe you’re ready to enter the blogosphere.

Contrary to rumor, blogging’s not just some Babel echo chamber of white-guy geek pseudo-punditry. Blogs are a new way to see through others’ eyes, to in-vision other cultures. People around the world are now communicating beyond geographic, political or social borders, in ways unimaginable just a few short years ago. Think of it as CB radio for the global village – with unlimited channels, classy design, and searchable archives.

You can begin browsing almost anywhere. One blog inevitably leads to another. Or a dozen, or a hundred more, mirroring Borges’ visualization of an infinite, ultimately unknowable library — sans librarian or catalog — or just one impossibly vast book of sub-pages expanded with fresh entries daily.

Blogging is now booming. As more cybercafes open up, the word “remote” has dwindling relevance. By late 2004, mainland China had an estimated half-million bloggers. This new medium’s vast potential is both personal and political. Blogs are inherently democratic, despite tending to be written for other bloggers. Each blog is a single node of multiple informally-defined affinity groups; feedback comments make blogging highly participatory. And many practitioners are smart and decidedly multi-cultural young women. Here are a few almost random examples out of Asia:

Hailey Xie, from Beijing, has a site called “Every Earthling Victory”:

I just finished eight hours of sitting in front of the computer working, talked and thought about people I know online, am now back to the computer again; with 100M ADSL connection, think I’m connected to the whole world. E-calendar reminder pops up: rock your 22nd June 1st.

June 1st. Kids love this day. On International Children’s Day they are free from schoolwork; they go to parks for free; they get presents from parents; they dress like princes/princesses.

I can’t recall any single June 1st in my childhood, but they for sure were full of joy, like any other single day when I was below the age of ten. Those were the days without computer and internet, the days when I lived with beeper instead of cellphone, cold water instead of air-conditioning, nothing instead of mp3 player. I lived in my very home; a small box displaying black-and-white images was the only way I learned the world I couldn’t see.
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Leylop (an online name she invented, and is now known by), was as a history major at Zhejiang University reputedly one of the first Chinese bloggers writing in English. “I was born in Hangzhou, China on January 21, 1982. My life is pretty ordinary except I've been travelling a lot since 2003 — around China, Tibet, Europe, Southeast Asia, India, Pakistan... I enjoy exploring the world on my own and meeting people from different places...” From her road blog (including travel photos):

Last week I traveled to Darjeeling, a hill station in northern India. I met two Japanese girls there and I like them very much. The first girl is Maiko, and two things surprised me. First, she's traveling alone — I've met many Japanese guys who're traveling alone, but she's the first solo Japanese female traveler I met. And second, she speaks very good English. Usually, Japanese don't speak good English, and their accent is quite strong. Maiko has been traveling seven months now, and for her this trip is not just about visiting other countries, but also learning different cuisines. So far, she's been to Philippine learning how to cook Philippine food, and then in a small village of Nepal learning how to cook Nepali food, now five months in India learning how to cook Indian food. She said she has one more country to go, and after that she'll go back to Japan and open her own restaurant…

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Popagandhi (“20, student, Mac evangelist, foodie. Meh. More coming, as if you cared…”) relates experiences in Calcutta, Seoul, Darjeeling, Vienna, Bangkok, Phnom Penh — and her home city, Singapore:

… In less than a week I have picked up a whole range of languages and been given practice in some rusty ones – learned to count money in Malay, talk about football in Thai, say a few phrases in Tamil, give the driver directions in Hokkien in my heavy Teochew accent, speak much malaised Mandarin to the only other Chinese staff at the outlet as if in an unconscious expression of ethnic solidarity, deliberately screw up my pronunciation a little so I could talk to the Vietnamese part-timer who’s also a computer science student at our local varsity…

Travelling in Asia as an English-speaking Asian, is to blend in: to look as Oriental as you possibly can while in Korea, to try to get a good tan before hitting Indochina, and to speak as little as possible lest your accent betrays you – or at least until after the farang and gwailo and gaijin and angmoh gets ripped off with a tourist price, and you get a local ticket with nothing said.
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Yan Sham-Shackleton is a high-profile blogger championing democracy and free speech in Hong Kong. Her blog, www.glutter.org (“Glutter is a mixture of Glitter and Gutter — what better way to describe my home city?”), is often blocked by the mainland authorities, along with use of the popular blogging platforms Typepad and Blogspot, (All mainland websites, including blogs, have to be registered, and access to overseas sites from China’s 40 million net-connected computers is restricted).

She says: “The way I conceived Glutter was always just a normal person who wants this thing called freedom. I thought those who only talk about politics make themselves inaccessible. I wanted to be flesh and blood, open and honest. If people got interested in my life and me they might get interested in politics in this region as well… I have been making scrap books and keeping a diary since I was a kid. So it’s habitual, except now it’s in digital form and anyone can browse.”

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), of a world total of 75 dissidents who have been jailed for online activism, 63 are from China. In April 2005, Glutter was nominated by RSF for a vote-in award as one of the 60 top blogs worldwide defending freedom of expression.

Yan’s response:

I am not here to “beat,” or “compete” with the [other] 59 blogs. There is no real “competition,” between us because none of us are working against each other. In fact we’re all working towards the same thing together. All of us in our own way are trying to “Defend the Right of Free Expression,” through the blogging medium.

“Winning” means that the tenets of free speech [are] so entrenched in every corner of the world that we won’t fear it being taken away. “Winning” means no one goes to jail for their thoughts and actions, their writing and art because the government feels them to be a threat. “Winning” means we have a free press, free thought, and freedom to gather.

“Winning” is the day when Glutter ceases to exist, Reporters Without Borders ceases to exist, as with the 59 other blogs. Not because we gave up, got put in jail, blocked or censored, but because we simply do not need to exist. Why? Because we won our rights, for us and everyone else.

In June, Yan started a Flickr group called Protests, Political Art, Democracy, Social Change, hosting photos of social justice protests and political art. By mid-July the group had 357 members showing 1,597 photos representing causes from all around the world.

One of Yan’s longer posts on Glutter contrasts the socio-economic impact of democracy in India and communism in China. Her conclusion, having visited Mumbai slums: “…when the Chinese government talks of what their definition of “Human Rights” is, I actually agree with them. I know how if they give up on raising the standards of living of everyone in my country what actually could happen.” A very pragmatic statement.

Pre-Internet (in Invisible Cities), Italo Calvino described Octavia, the spiderweb city, as follows:

“There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks. You walk on the little wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open spaces… This is the foundation of the city: a net which serves as passage and support.”

“Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know that the net will last only so long.”

—Ken Rodgers

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