{"id":1607,"date":"2007-07-22T08:51:17","date_gmt":"2007-07-22T08:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/07\/22\/in-ur-internetz-enablin-ur-act\/"},"modified":"2007-07-22T08:51:17","modified_gmt":"2007-07-22T08:51:17","slug":"in-ur-internetz-enablin-ur-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/07\/22\/in-ur-internetz-enablin-ur-act\/","title":{"rendered":"IN UR INTERNETZ, ENABLIN UR ACTIVISTS"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s been some discussion recently in places I can’t link to about the Purpose of Blogging, and whether it’s really appropriate to be using the medium to exchange silly pictures of cats. Ethan Zuckerman<\/a> made an important point about the utility of banality<\/a> (that link 404’s at the moment, but I assume Ethan will eventually fix it. Hint, hint. The post is still on the front page, though):<\/p>\n

\n

So while Flickr should be used for displaying pictures of cute cats, it\u2019s also proved an effective tool for avoiding keyword filtering. Activists in China are using Flickr to disseminate images that contain words that get blocked by keyword filters <\/a>– a simple tool built by Zhang Erning <\/a>allows a photo of Einstein at a blackboard to be annotated with arbitrary text that won\u2019t be blocked by the Chinese firewall. You can post videos of the Star Wars kid<\/a> on YouTube\u2026 but you can also post videos of Zimbabwean labor activists being beated by government thugs<\/a>. Twitter lets Robert Scoble <\/a>tell me what he\u2019s doing 200 freaking times a day\u2026 but it also lets me know whether Egyptian activists<\/a> have been released from the police station when they go in for questioning.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important that these tools are generally used for banal purposes. If internet entrepreneurs created \u201cProtestr\u201d as a web 2.0 tool for activists, no repressive goverment would leave it unblocked. But blocking a tool that is mostly used for amusement or communication between friends has consequences – the users looking for cute cat videos get annoyed that YouTube is blocked\u2026 and learn about their government\u2019s willingness to constrain speech. This cost doesn\u2019t mean that governments won\u2019t choose to block these tools, but it makes the calculus more complicated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, while it may seem ridiculous that we have access to the greatest communication system in the history of human culture, and use it for sending dopey pictures of domestic animals around, it turns out that all the LOLcattery serves a greater good. <\/p>\n

So here’s a message from the dog:<\/p>\n

\"i-b98035217f9e9d53cb2ece95abf65f62-sm_think_of_activists2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(The Queen of Niskayuna has too much dignity to resort to cat-like spelling…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s been some discussion recently in places I can’t link to about the Purpose of Blogging, and whether it’s really appropriate to be using the medium to exchange silly pictures of cats. Ethan Zuckerman made an important point about the utility of banality (that link 404’s at the moment, but I assume Ethan will eventually… Continue reading IN UR INTERNETZ, ENABLIN UR ACTIVISTS<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,20,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-dog","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}