I Agree With What She Said
One must salute and encourage sanity at all times.
Some big picture Google analysis from Rebecca MacKinnon. The vast majority of commentators who have been discussing the Google situation over the past week know little to nothing about the Net in China. It’s a nice change to get the thoughts of a bona fide expert in the field.
I had to force myself to read through everything Rebecca wrote before starting a response post. Actually, I had started the post and was already clipping and criticizing her criticizing but had to stop myself.
Having read the entire thing now, I definitely think the first half can be torn apart with clever snark (you know, for the web traffic) but I generally liked the second half, finding it much in line with my personal politics, idealistic and theoretical as they might be. Either way, I probably won’t be writing a post and have decided I’d just chat about it here on Hearsay instead.
The main thing is, I don’t see much of an answer on how this move is going to help Chinese netizens more than it’ll hurt them. There’s a reference to her buddy Zuckerman suggesting Google possibly developing some anti-censorship system (with a flux capacitor), but that’s pretty damn vague. The rest of the post goes on to discuss the existence of a cyberspace that Google largely governs, granting it Spidey-sense powers, which is why there’s a need for an oversight system that GNI is hoping to pioneer to institute government by consent in this new paradigm. But…this is either way ahead of its time or its a digression from what many people are actually worried about: So what happens to users in China if this ends up being the lose-lose situation?
We know that much of the self-righteous human-rights-supportin’ world will cheer triumphantly when that situation happens. For about a week. Then life in a Google-available world for them goes on. But what about the childre–Chinese?
I respectfully don’t think Rebecca gave us any insight on that, as a bona fide expert in the field.
Wow, you read the entire post? That thing was downright Tolstoyesque in length.
Expert? What does “expert” mean when applied to the Internet? Does it mean she is an expert when it comes to policy? Or does it mean she is an expert on finding things online?
One should not confuse being an expert with the ability to write prose. Too often bloggers who write are considered experts, when in fact they are only writers. Thus, they are perhaps experts at writing on a particular subject, but they are not experts in that subject. It is the experts in China who you will not find writing.
In this instance, I do not mean an expert commentator, but someone who has taken a great deal of time and effort to study policy, the industry, etc. from an academic approach (i.e. not merely a blogger).
There are a lot of jokers writing, and a lot of experts not writing, but once in a while you do find folks who do both.
Thanks for posting, I very much enjoyed your newest post. I think you should post more often, you obviously have talent for blogging!