Today’s world is now full of bloggers, and who would have thought I would become one. The rise of blogs has taken place rapidly, and now the internet is inundated with blogs on topics such as music, art, politics, to travel journals, to, well basically, a very public diary. Technorati tracked 112 million blogs by December 2007. Yet, this so called “blog-revolution” does amount to something more than just space on the internet. For the first time (I dare say, in history), it is possible to have your writing published and accessible for the public to read, without cost or censorship (theoretically, of course.) Granted, the publishing world did provide a means for editing out bad writing, it has become a corporate business with interests that have complicated the process of publishing writing. Now, those boundaries are slowly disappearing with the advent of blogs and the increasing accessibility of the internet. And what is more important is that you can now read the ramblings and thoughts of amateur writers such as myself.
Some call this phenomenon of self-publishing on the internet “Web 2.0”. I am using the term Web 2.0 very loosely to represent the concept behind sites like Wikipedia and Youtube, where the information available on the web is not limited to that “produced”, but rather, is contributed by everyday people, qualified or not. There is a much more in-depth discussion and definition of Web 2.0 that I won’t get into, I’m not quite tech-savvy enough. This concept of Web 2.0 is thought to increase creativity, information-sharing, and collaboration around the world. Arguably, a new process of democratization becomes possible with Web 2.0. The number of internet users throughout the world is steadily growing and internet access is trickling down populations to even reach some of the poorest (although, there is still far to go). Political opinions, ideas, and most importantly, criticisms, are being shared, not among top leaders, but by regular citizens. Audiences are expanding as more people with access to the internet can find information on almost anything around the world.
Yet, is all this just “techno-utopianist” rhetoric? Some have argued that with Web 2.0, we have achieved what is known as “you make the content, we make the money.” The fast growing pace of Web 2.0 has brought about the explosion of companies such as Google and Wikipedia, creating a whole new form of business and economics. Are these businesses, by providing “free access” to information, creating economic democracy, or are they benefitting from the free labour of ordinary citizens?
Take the example of China. China is currently one of the most exciting and interesting places in the world – it’s on the verge of becoming the most powerful country, economically, and that provides a considerable amount of political leverage. Yet, with a host of its own internal problems (Tibet, the Falun Gong, Taiwan to name a few…I could name more, it’s not like anyone in China has access to blogspot and can read this anyway, blogspot is blocked in China…), China is not without growing discontent internally, as well as political pressures externally. In the face of the rising use of the internet for purposes such as information-spreading and protest planning, China has created the Golden Shield Project (a.k.a. the Great Firewall of China) in order to provide greater censorship and inaccessibility to particularly sensitive topics on the internet. This does not work by technology alone: much of the censorship has been propagated by fear – it is not the blog poster that gets in trouble, but rather, the owner of the site in which the politically-sensitive information is posted. Here, the foreign companies such as Yahoo and Google have played a role in the censorship – they have been compliant to China’s wishes, knowingly helping the government suppress dissent. However, that is not to villainize these companies – they face very little other options to stay competitive. So, this brings us to the question: has China effectively silenced the coming of Web 2.0 (and democratization-by-internet) for the Chinese people?
computer users in asia - there are lots.
But that is not to say that the Chinese are content to sit back and watch this happen. In the past twenty years, China has experienced political stability unlike it has seen in the past century, and with it, economic growth. Whether China likes it or not, rapid economic growth has meant rapid modernization. The rates of internet growth have been uncontrollable, unlike in places like Cuba where internet censorship is partly performed through government regulation of computer access. With cheap computers and an increasing infrastructure for communication, regulating the internet will become increasingly harder. For example, almost the whole country now has access to mobile phone networks – no small feat, considering only a small percentage of Canada has good access (I struggle to get a good connection in my room in Vancouver…) Even in remote corners of China, where roads barely exist, mobile networks exist; I can attest to this through personal experience. Increasing external pressure on China’s media control may help loosen China’s grip; more likely, China’s booming computer and technology industry will increasingly find ways around China’s Golden Shield. The majority of internet users in China are young – people growing up in a post-Deng economic reform period and a post-Tiananmen period of political participation who use the internet in ways that CCP leaders barely try. Without illusions on the ability of the Chinese to express political opinion, that is not to say that some won't (and don’t already) try. And the internet will be their medium when they do. I can’t make predictions about what will happen in the future in China, but I believe that the internet is providing a forum for people to communicate in China, in ways that were not possible before, and this most definitely will have repercussions for political participation and hopefully, political freedoms, in China.
The ability to blog could have greater ramifications for someone in China than for me. But even I am slowly coming to embrace the power of Web 2.0. Sometimes we take for granted actual impact of the internet (I barely remember a life without it though I only learned how to use it around high school), and lose sight of the continuing impact it will have on the future. Does the internet provide an outlet, a form of communication that had previously not existed? I think it does. If the internet is a forum for political discussion in places like China, where such discussions are often discouraged by the government, then it’s more important now than ever, that the internet be used for discussion. And that is why I write.
- JC
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