KJ
Selections
ENTERING
THE BLOGOSPHERE (from KJ #61)
by
Ken Rodgers
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.
— www.haxi.org
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…
— www.leylop.com
Popagandhi, age 20,
undergraduate student, 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.
— www.popagandhi.com
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, 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.”
Sidebar:
Reporters Without Borders and the Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have made six recommendations to ensure
freedom of expression on the Internet.
1. Any law about the flow of information online must be anchored in
the right to freedom of expression as defined in Article 19 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
2. In a democratic and open society it is up to the citizens to decide
what they wish to access and view on the Internet. Filtering or rating
of online content by governments is unacceptable. Filters should only
be installed by Internet users themselves. Any policy of filtering,
be it at a national or local level, conflicts with the principle of
free flow of information.
3. Any requirement to register websites with governmental authorities
is not acceptable. Unlike licensing scarce resources such as broadcasting
frequencies, an abundant infrastructure like the Internet does not justify
official assignment of licenses. On the contrary, mandatory registration
of online publications might stifle the free exchange of ideas, opinions,
and information on the Internet.
4. A technical service provider must not be held responsible for the
mere conduit or hosting of content unless the hosting provider refuses
to obey a court ruling. A decision on whether a website is legal or
illegal can only be taken by a judge, not by a service provider. Such
proceedings should guarantee transparency, accountability and the right
to appeal.
5. All Internet content should be subject to the legislation of the
country of its origin ("upload rule") and not to the legislation
of the country where it is downloaded.
6. The Internet combines various types of media, and new publishing
tools such as blogging are developing. Internet writers and online journalists
should be legally protected under the basic principle of the right to
freedom of expression and the complementary rights of privacy and protection
of sources.
Global
Voices worldwide blog
directory: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/
Reporters without Borders:
www.rsf.org/
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