The internet has undoubtedly democratised the public space, allowing a range of voices previously silenced or ignored. But what has been the net result of this process? Freedom of choice is not always good for democracy. This observation is at the heart of University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein’s book “Republic.com 2.0” (an update…
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Rove, etiquette master
The Pot Meet Kettle Black Award for 2007. (From the mouth of a bigot to us all.)
Peeling back the onion
Wikileaks is a relatively new online resource that aims to discover information governments and institutions would rather be kept hidden. New reports include American use of chemical weapons in Iraq and lists of American equipment in Iraq. Perhaps the mainstream media would like to explore other issues of real importance, such as the Bush administration’s…
Defaming the bigoted
The Citizen Media Law Project have launched an important new project, a Legal Threats Database. The “goal is to create an accurate and complete collection of legal threats directed at online speech.” Take the case Khalaji v. Derakhshan: In October 2007, Mohammed Mehdi Khalaji, a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, filed…
Yahoo! takes a dive
It’s a rare example indeed when a Western multinational is chastised in public for putting profit before principle: They sat just two feet apart, the mother of a journalist confined to a Chinese prison and the wealthy head of the giant U.S. company that helped put him behind bars. But before Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive…
Viva laissez-faire
“Research revealed yesterday that a mere 38% of people downloading the [Radiohead] album were willing to part with anything at all.” I paid five pounds for the privilege and In Rainbows is one of the finest albums of the year.
Google day and night
If you think Google already has too much power in our connected world, they’re just warming up.
Change can only come from within
Arash Abadpour, The Manitoban, October 24: For a country with a double-digit inflation rate, regime change is only a matter of time. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s humiliation at Columbia University and the criticism that followed it in the Iranian government ranks was only one other sign that the group which rules the Islamic Republic is…
Be afraid, typewriter lovers
The concept of a “digital native” is an interesting one. It has been described thus: “While I groan whenever the buzzword ”˜digital native’ is jockeyed about, I also know that there is salience to this term. It is not a term that demarcates a generation, but a state of experience. The term is referencing those…
Sorry is the hardest word
Yahoo! finally comes (nearly) clean: A top executive at Yahoo Inc. has apologized for failing to inform U.S. lawmakers about the circumstances under which the Internet company gave the Chinese government information on one of its users. Michael Callahan, executive vice president and general counsel at Yahoo, told a House Foreign Relations panel in February…