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Artificial Countries

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I was browsing the history of Esperanto and discovered Rose Island, a micronation in the Adriatic Sea that declared itself the Republic of Rose Island in 1968. (And whose official language was Esperanto.)

Apparently there have been any number of these escapades, including, of course, pirate radio broadcasters off northern Europe. The story of Sealand is especially entertaining.

Gotta read up on them.

The photo is from Wikimedia Commons and has been released into the public domain by its copyright holder. Click for a larger view.

Other issues related to balkanization of the Internet

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I wrote yesterday about the potential for the Internet to become fragmented and subdivided so that it would be many separate internets rather than a vehicle for open international communication. Traditionally this kind of subdivision is called balkanization, though I called it cantonization because of the current example of the great Chinese firewall [China’s Golden Shield]. What you see as the Internet when you log on in many countries around the world is only a portion of what you’ll see from other locations. There are some other important issues related to this fragmentation of the net. [Read more…]

Google Chinese-language search, Hong Kong, and Internet Cantonization

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So the “solution” to providing uncensored Chinese-language search, at least right now (beginning 22 March, 2010), is to have Chinese citizens use google.com.hk (hk==Hong Kong) rather than mainland-based google.cn. I guess it’s a breakthrough idea to do this, since under Hong Kong law, the uncensored search is legal, but of course the arguments going on these days about restrictive access to the Internet have to do with nations trying to restrict the access of their citizens based on physical location. And the location of a server is important because the local authorities can come in and physically shut you down.

But the great firewall is already blocking Google.com.hk content, as would be expected. [Read more…]

The Future of Publishing – by DK

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Here’s a novel way of looking at how we (maybe) fit into the future of publishing—Dorling Kindersley Books did a video about The Future of Publishing, initially for internal consumption, but later on they released it on YouTube. As Cory Doctorow said when blogging it in BoingBoing.net[1] “Watch it at least halfway through…” and you’ll see a change in  attitude. [Read more…]

Making your own information radars

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Howard Rheingold has a series of videos describing how journalists (particularly) can use online tools to create their own radars (seek out information), filters (remove the crap), and dashboards (display the information). You can see lots of other video on his video blog.

I have thought recently about writing an online book (downloadable) or even a printable book about the “plumbing” that allows bloggers to integrate lots of sources into their blogs—because most bloggers are not really technologists and it’s hard to make some of these software tools work correctly. My thought was to connect the dots and come up with a Give your blog a shot of steroids “book” that would be really useful to non-tech-savvy bloggers. When am I going to do that?

Howard’s major message right now is about 21st Century Literacies which you can view online—he and I were in London during July 2009, where he delivered that particular talk.