The firewall’s bureaucracy

I’ve had problems of my own with China’s Great Firewall (see here and here). That was an instance of the Firewall not working even on its own terms, since the site I was running was a perfectly inoffensive business site. The way my then-colleague in China got it sorted out was essentially bureaucratic: he submitted a form, it went to “the proper authorities”, and we were fairly quickly unblocked.

However, what if you want to say something that the Chinese government doesn’t want you to say? That’s what the Great Firewall is really for: monitoring, controlling, blocking. Wired has a very interesting article on how this is playing out – the Firewall’s technology and methods are getting ever more sophisticated… but so are the activists and techies who are trying to subvert or avoid it. According to the author, it’s the latter who are winning, especially when students in cybercafes will teach you how for only USD1/hr!

It’s also interesting that Singapore gets a mention: Singapore, with just 2.4 million regular Internet users and very deep pockets, might have a chance at quelling Internet-fueled popular revolts. In contrast, the article concludes, China is just too big, and the Chinese people are too practical and determined. They will always find a way past the censors. That’s the only time Singapore is mentioned, so I’m not sure why the author chose to throw that in.

Anyway, I found it a very interesting – very cyberpunk – snapshot of the bureaucracy of control on the one hand, vs the DIY ethos of the techies and students on the other.

Indonesia: potential unused

Philip Bowring had an interesting piece in the IHT recently about Indonesia – its potential wealth, its potential global influence, its cultural strength, its importance overall.

Where does the money go?

• Tomorrow: Typical millionaire (in Singapore).
• Typical millionaire (source for the above).
  
• Cap Gemini report

Recently, two different friends from widely separated parts of the world have been raving to me about how cool Indonesia’s music scene is. Sadly, even as Indonesia’s day draws closer, at least one person I know who’s highly active in the growing cultural scene there is considering moving to Singapore. Why? Disillusionment with rampant corruption…

China’s not a threat

I’m just back from a short holiday in Wales, the first time I’ve been to the UK in 3.5 years. This business about Chinese hackers attacking political and military systems in the West was still all over the British papers, and airwaves. It’s all seemed a bit unlikely; I know from living there that China is full of computers running pirate versions of Windows, whose owners have less than no clue about security, firewalls, or keeping anti-malware systems up to date. The Beijing Newspeak blog put me on to a couple of well-thought pieces by Mutant Palm (hitherto unknown to me, but now on the RSS feeds) that put the ‘threat’ into perspective (ie: let’s worry more about bad reporting than PLA hackers):

• The Return of Fu Manchu – Chapter One: Heinous Hackers
• The Return of Fu Manchu – Chapter 1.5: Hackers and Spies

There are lots of good reasons to support China’s rise – amongst them: which would we rather see, China becoming a world power (and engaging in the kind of activities that world powers all do), or China failing to become a world power (and likely collapsing into chaos)? I know which one I’m rooting for…

A better culture through gaming?

In the context of the environment, I posted the other day that I thought China’s leaders would use technology to fight corruption within government ranks. It seems that some anti-corruption officials are thinking laterally as, just a day or two later, the news broke that the government has funded the release of a computer game in which players are encouraged to kill and torture corrupt officials…. Naturally, to save embarrassing the Communist Party, the game is set in the past, in the time of the Emperors – but that won’t stop the message getting through.

China Digital Times discuss it here, pointing out that (as a responsible game should), the game automatically shuts off after two hours so that younger players won’t be online for unhealthy periods.

According to the BBC, the game has been so popular that the servers have been overloaded. The same article also quotes a professor from Beijing University, Wang Xiongjun, who complains: “Government officials should be the ones getting anti-corruption education, not local youngsters“. While that’s no doubt also true, the way to change a culture is to educate the young, no? And perhaps this game will contribute to that.

According to China CSR blog, the game has been sponsored not by the central government or party, but by “Ningbo Haishu District Discipline Inspection Commission and Haishu District Ximen Street Party Working Committee” – which, China Digital Times clarifies, is in Zhejiang Province. What might happen if Beijing decided to follow suit?

Media tools, roles, and working

Too busy to do more than a few lines on each of these, but there’s a wealth of interesting content in my click-stream today!

• Microsoft’s Community Group Therapy blog had a piece on ‘Co-working‘ (found, as with so many good things, via Smart Mobs).
• This led to what was apparently the original story on the topic, in Business Week. The concept is to set up one of these rent-a-cubicle places for freelancers (an idea that’s been around for a long time), but with lounge areas and a coffee-bar. The aim is to replicate the ‘Starbucks’ atmosphere, where independent creatives tend to hang out rather than work alone at home, but with a more focused clientele that may be better for networking and stimulating creativity. This really seems like an idea that would work in Singapore: I’m pretty certain from my working experience over the last year that there would be a market. Business Week apparently identified it a trend to watch earlier this year.
• There’s a wiki dedicated to discussing co-working, and an Institute to promote it. Hmmm, I wonder how much capital it would take to get one going here…?
• Staying in Singapore, Cherian George reflects on the changing balance of power between the local mainstream media and blogosphere, and speculates on how the government may react.
• Indeed, how should mainstream journalists react? This article on Public Journalism Today gives some suggestions on introducing innovation to the newsroom.
• On the other side of the divide, NGO-in-a-box has a handy guide to using free, open-source software to produce multimedia content.
• I’ve also found this interesting blog: Innovation in College Media – likely to be a useful resource in my new job.
• And rounding up, back to where I began, at Microsoft’s Community Group Therapy blog. I’ve written a lot about the intergenerational culture gap, the Gen-X and Gen-Y approach to power distance and technology, and how this may impact management – particularly in Asia. This article is an extremely good example of the kinds of issues I’m thinking about.

Connectivity links

Pun intended, hehehe. I went through the Smart Mobs RSS feed for the first time in a while today, and a number of links I’ve found today get me thinking:

• The next five billion Internet users will be in India and China. There’s a link to an interesting podcast about the cultural issues involved. Also, the number of Chinese internet users will soon be greater than the number of people online in the US, with Chinese also becoming the largest online language.
• Meanwhile, the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan is about to give its public internet access for the first time.
• And, on the other side of China, South Korea is home to the world’s largest online community: Cyworld, with 19,996,000 members. 10,000 sign up every day; 950,000 are over 50 years old.

Of course, computers and internet access aren’t the only ways of connecting with people around the world. I find that I often contact people in other countries via SMS; it’s cheap, immediate, and personal. For many people around the world, mobile phones are much cheaper and more appropriate than computers:

• Just under a billion SMS messages were sent on the eve of Chinese New Year by residents of Beijing and Shanghai alone.
• China has the largest number of mobile phone subscribers in the world, expected to reach 520 million by the end of 2007.
• Switching continents, in 10 African countries, mobile phones are being used to assist health workers in the field in their fight against AIDS;
• while in Zimbabwe, SMS text messages are being used by journalists to circumvent government censorship, and get the news to the people in < 160 characters.

Both of these last two topics have potential Chinese applications as well. I was having a conversation with friends about this recently. One of China’s biggest, and eternal, problems – going far back into Imperial times – is the corruption of, and abuse of power by, local officials. The Chinese people themselves have just had to suffer, because it has rarely been possible to complain or obtain justice: “The mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away“.

Now, with the central government seemingly serious about attacking entrenched corruption, will the spread of mobile phones and internet connectivity mean that the mountains will be ‘levelled’, and the ‘Emperor’ just an SMS away?

Random links

These caught my eye today:

• In the UK Telegraph, more about the amputee whose prosthesis has been spliced into her nerves. What I didn’t realise from the original article I blogged was: “If someone touches the patch of skin on her chest it feels [to her] as if they are touching her hand“. So in order to ‘feel’ the sensation of you shaking her hand… you have to stroke her breast??? Um… you know, I think I can see some flaws in that implementation….
• In New Scientist: a highly dangerous variant of Bird Flu, capable of killing humans, is found in a British turkey farm. No-one can work out how it got there.
• In its Iraqi adventure, as in Afghanistan, the US has only one significant military ally: the UK. Read here about the despicable way the US behaves when it shoots down British soldiers. The opinion amongst the Brit soldiers is: “One said: ‘I have met a former US pilot, and he would never have made the rank of private in the TA here. I wouldn’t have trusted him to drive a bus.’ Another said: ‘The American military have the best technology and worst personnel. The British military have the worst technology but best personnel. The Americans have one mentality – if it moves, shoot it.’” And this is how the US behaves towards its closest ally! No wonder they’re running out of friends around the world.

Race in Malaysia and Indonesia

Since I was just writing about apartheid in South Africa, it’s interesting to turn to the IHT and see two separate articles about racial policies and attitudes in Indonesia and Malaysia. Note that I’m not trying to make any comparisons with apartheid; that was a case all on its own.