Communicating in a networked world
I was minding my own business, getting ready to interview someone, at LeWeb in the “Geek Pad” where Microsoft had given us an area to hang out and connect online, when I noticed Eliane had her Macbook Pro over her head. I didn’t see any rain, so I knew she wasn’t using it as an umbrella, and then I heard her speaking intimately to the Mac.
Since there are hardly any phone booths anymore, she had turned her Mac into a phone booth!
In my teens, on two different occasions, I spent a few months living in each of two countries (outside my native US), learning the predominant language and picking up the culture. Every once in a while it smacks me in the face that this makes me significantly different from many people in the US.[1] And it often affects how I react in both business and personal situations.
In northern Mexico, as a teen, I learned first hand how teenage boys functioned in a society that was moving from poverty and religious conservatism to modern urban life. In Québec City (Canada) I studied at the largest French-speaking university outside of France, and learned the pride a community takes in its native language and culture.[2] And I became aware of some of the movements working to preserve the language.[3]
So when one of the Traveling Geeks became somewhat stuck to the tar baby of how the French are going about world brand-building all wrong[4], I um kinda felt it in my gut more from the point of view of the French than the American. Robert might be right about what has to be done to build a world-wide brand, but maybe these companies weren’t about building world-brands, at least at this moment. [Read more…]
The free flow of information, which is facilitated by the Internet, should have no respect for political borders. Nations that try to restrict the flow of information by either cutting it off at the border (using Internet routers and filtering) or by cutting it off in the “last mile” to your computer (using content filtering and throttling [see China’s Golden Shield] – or by thwarting net neutrality[1] principles) will ultimately fail to do so. Information wants to be free.
We are a species that communicates by telling tales, and we learn from the stories told by others.
YaleGlobal Online carried an interesting article [part II is the part you want to read] examining China’s dual standard when it comes to interference in what they call their “internal affairs.” China strongly opposes the granting of visas to His Holiness the Dalai Lama when he visits countries around the world — calling it “interference in China’s internal affairs.” However, the attempts by the Chinese to block the Dalai Lama’s appearances can just as easily be interpreted as Chinese attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. They have succeeded in many countries, and notably failed in countries such as Germany and France. And particularly in the US, where the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, and in Canada, where he received honorary citizenship in 2006.
Here’s what YaleGlobal said about their two-part article: “China, a significant beneficiary of globalization, is happy to go out into the world, but seems less willing to let the world come in, according to writer Frank Ching. In fact, China, which asserts that it does not interfere with the internal affairs of other countries, appears to do the exact opposite, especially with regard to issues surrounding alleged separatism in China. Notably vocal whenever a foreign leader meets with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama or a country grants him a visa, Beijing claims that such actions “grossly interfere” with China’s internal affairs and “hurt the feelings” of the Chinese people. For a country that prides itself on having signed more human rights treaties than the US – certainly a mature approach to international affairs – such a reaction seems oddly truculent. Indeed, as Ching argues, globalization is a two-way street where the benefits hopefully compensate, even outweigh, the loss of sovereignty. Rightly or wrongly, China seems yet to agree with such logic. – YaleGlobal”
[1] Julius Genachowski, Chairman of the [US] Federal Communications Commission, on net neutrality
Craig Newmark put up a good article on his blog about Julius Genachowski’s[1] position on net neutrality. I wrote a short article on it two days ago. Thanks, Craig, for mentioning OpenInternet.gov, where everyone can learn more about the issue. The full speech at the Brookings Institution is also available on OpenInternet.gov. The Internet, of course, is a world-wide resource, and not just a US institution, but the FCC regulates network operators in the US and the backbone connections that support huge portions of the net today, and what the FCC does on this issue is critical here as well as an example for the rest of the world.
Sometimes as tech fans and geeks we just assume that technology we invent will be used fairly and for the good of all. When I was inventing online learning (after a half dozen others had done it earlier—LOL) in the 1970s, I assumed that we were all working toward a common goal – making life and learning better and easier for everyone. Always surprises me when someone gains a patent on something like the process of pretest-prescribe-posttest[2], which we had been doing since at least the 1970s (and perhaps since B. F. Skinner experimented with computer-based teaching machines in 1954.
But the point is that unless we scrupulously protect open and even-handed access to the Internet, and don’t allow anyone to corner the net and deny us access unless we pay more, we could end up with the same kinds of fees we now see for our telephone service (it hasn’t gotten cheaper for me in all the years I’ve had phones—it seems to go up every time I change providers). Take a look at Genachowski’s talk and you’ll see why I think there’s greater hope now for the net.
[2] Interactive learning system with pretest
Craig Newmark is Founder and Customer Support Rep for Craig’s List.
Howard Rheingold’s message is that we need to attend to 21st-Century literacies. meaning that we need to know (or learn) how to sort out the good from the bad.
Howard suggests the critical skills are: attention; participation; collaboration; network-savvy and critical consumption (what Howard often calls crap detection).
JD Lasica interviewed Howard in Cambridge [see JD’s blog post] when we were on Traveling Geeks.