Surfwatch and other Internet ratings systems

[Marc Salomon]

Howard White <hwhite at ccs.neu.edu>
|Subjects of the experiment - one billion humans
|Censorship solution providers - the best vendors of the Unitied States &
Europe
|The client - the Government of the People's Republic of China

The Chinese regime is pretty nefarious in intent and crude in its actions, but
right here in the good ole USA we might see a different approach to a similar
problem that controls discourse just as well without the messy side effects.

While we pride ourselves as a society free of censorship, we still see a pretty
tightly controlled mainstream flow of news and information.  In fact, political
discourse here is so tightly controlled that we have little place to criticize
the Chinese, practically or ideally.

And then there's the USA'a ally, Singapore.

=*=*=

Coax (TV Cable) digital networking schemes in the works seem to allow 95%
bandwith of content providers into the home with 5% or less bandwidth from the
home to the network.  Providers of the homogenous "content" that we've grown to
love (Home Improvement, COPS...) from other media sources like this as they can
monopolize the distributive network access while we are still free to consume
their product, in its violence and sexual glory, from the privacy and comfort
of our homes.

While mere humans are allowed to nibble at the edges of the information market
without significant government interference, the vast majority of information
flowing into the home now and under a new status quo will be as controlled and
homogenous as if there were state censorship in the USA for reasons that Noam
Chomsky discusses in _Manufacturing_Consent_.

The network holds promise as a global communication infrastructure that is less
subject to the mediation filter of high capitalization that TV and print
require now.  I can be a consumer as well as a producer with access to the same
distribution as biggies like Time Warner.  But if big money media beneficiaries
of the current media setup use their power shrewdly as this new form is coming
into being, another opening for exchange in an electronic information economic
democracy will slam shut.

State censorship sucks, but at least everything's on the table and you know
where you stand.  Its the illusion of free speech, neutered for pragmatism, and
rife with contradictions that is the real killer.

-marc
Sorry to discuss politics on the list, but...

-- 
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// Marc Salomon - Software Engineer - Innovative Software Systems Group     \\ 
\\ Library and Center for Knowledge Management - UC, San Francisco          // 
// phone :  415.476.9541 - e-mail : marc at ckm.ucsf.edu - fax: 415.476.4653   \\
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