How Bing.com self-censor Tiananmen

2009-06-09T11:14:00.004+08:00

How Bing.com censor Tiananmen
Originally uploaded by IsaacMao

By using blindsearch, we can easily find how Bing.com is a natural-born self-censor even to it's US-based users. If you search 天安门(Tiananmen in Chinese), the different results set pops up than Yahoo and Google. It's not the difference of order and page rank, but totally removal of those links about Tiananmen massacre. Some twitter users in China argued that it could be an conspiracy of Microsoft and China authority to exchange priority enforcing MS software piracy punishment by China government.

For Google, it's smarter that they keep the full index for US-based users, so it's always possible to get the real result from Google.com. Although Google.cn did self-censor some of the results, it's good for people to compare and study the difference. However, it's very strange to Microsoft, the Redmond-based business, do something stupid to give handles to any challengers from its home land. And it apparently eclipse itself on its business value. Another word, it shows people Bing.com just a subset of the knowledge around the world.

I hope GNI can keep watch on this case and push Microsoft to explain that.

China: Isaac Mao #twinterviews Hu Yong

2009-05-08T23:47:00.001+08:00

from Global Voices Online » China by John Kennedy

Those faithfully following the #China Twitter stream late on the working day on Thursday were treated to a surprise when Isaac Mao began twinterviewing Peking University associate professor of new media Hu Yong, author of several books related to Internet theory and culture.

From Mao's blog, Isaac 2.0, here is the transcript:

#1 作為中國最早感知互聯網浪潮的一撮人，當時和現在有什么差別？
当时是亚当和夏娃的简单乐园，现在“失乐园”了，成了丛林。盛行丛林法则。

Q1: As one of the earliest few people in China to sense the Internet wave coming, how do things differ now from back then?
A1: At the time it was Adam and Eve and a simple garden; now, “Paradise Lost” has become a jungle. The law of the jungle prevails.

#2 可是《數字化生存》并沒有考慮到那么多復雜情況，是否還是過于理想？
《数字化生存》的最大价值，是指出了未来社会的基本建构成分是比特而不是原子。这可以解释为什么今日众多产业面临绝境，也可以解释为什么中国政府花费那么大的人力物力修墙。当然，我那时和尼葛洛庞帝一样，是个乐观主义者，相信“闪闪发亮的比特”

Q2: Yet in “Being Digital”, things don't seem so complicated, was it perhaps too idealistic?
A2: The main point in “Being Digital” was to point out that the society of the future would be constructed of bits, and not atoms. This can explain why so many industries today are in such dire straits, and can also explain why the Chinese government spends such vast human and material resources in patching up the wall. Of course, at that time, I was just as much an optimist as Negroponte, still believing in “shiny, happy bits”.

#3 可是我還是有疑問，尤其對中國，比特對傳統的思維催生變化了嗎？
传统思维的变化不是一日之功。比特开启了众声喧哗的进程：我们原来鸦雀无声，一旦有些机会说话，谁都不会好好说话，只会聒噪。但不要小看说话的作用：它是心理疗伤，疗中国千年专制之伤。

Q3: But I'm still skeptical, especially with regards to China; will bits bring about change in traditional thinking?
A3: Changing traditional thinking won't happen overnight. Bits have launched a process of rising cacophony: once we were completely silent, but with the first opportunity to speak, nobody is just talking, they're shouting. But we can't undervalue the role of speaking: it's the cure for a psychological wound, curing the wound inflicted on China by a thousand years of autocracy.

#4 正要問《眾聲喧嘩》這本書，大家是喧嘩了，可是獲取手段多的人似乎更焦慮，那么沒有信息的人似乎反倒很安逸，這是真諦嗎？
好问题！这就是为什么那些获取了更多信息的人要致力于发起更多的对话和讨论。有时候我们用新技术武装至死：我们如此陷入技术的拥抱之中，忘记了社会的基本面。今天中国需要的是对一系列社会的基本问题进行讨论：一个拒绝讨论重大问题的文明，不是导向极权主义，就是通向死亡。

Q4: I want to ask about your book “The Rising Cacophony”. Everybody is making noise, and those with the most access to it seem to be the most worried, while yet those people who lack information seem to be the calmeste, does that sound true to you?
A4: Good question! Which is, why are those with more information the ones having the most dialogue and discussion. Sometimes, we arm ourselves to death with new technology; caught up in the embrace of technology as such, we forget about the fundamentals of society. China today needs to discuss a series of fundamental problems within society; a civilization which refuses to discuss major problems, if it doesn't lead to totalitarianism, then it leads itself to death.

#5 你的電視媒體實踐也產生了很多影響，例如CCTV-2的變化（我叫#CCAV)，是否更有相互比較的意味
我反对有人主张的对央视的新闻、宣传节目与网络都采取“不看、不上、不听、不说”的“四不”政策，因为每一寸阵地都值得去争取

Q5: Your experience in television media has had great impact, such as the changes at CCTV-2. Between the two, which has comparatively more significance?
A5: I object to any stance which advocates not watching, visiting, listening to or talking about CCTV news, propaganda programs or websites, because every inch of territory is worth fighting for.

#6 在《草根不盡》報告導讀中，講了媒體和權力的關系，新媒體似乎更激進地改變這種關系，但是也被有效地鉗制在一定強度內，縱觀媒體史，會亘古不破嗎？
福柯尝言：“权力得以稳固，为人们所接受，其原因非常简单，那就是它不只是作为说‘不’的强权施加压力，它贯穿于事物，产生事物，引发乐趣，生成知识，引起话语。”新媒体就是要既反抗“不”的高压，又反抗“是”的贯穿；既牢记奥威尔，更不忘赫胥黎

Q6: In the Info-Rhizome report, you say that within the relationship between media and authority, new media seems to more radically change this kind of relationship, but at the same time are constricted within a certain degree of influence; looking at the history of media, can that ever change?
A6: Foucault once said that, “[w]hat makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that is doesn't only weigh on us as a force that says no; it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse.” New media, however, revolts against the high-handedness of “no”, but also revolts against the traversal of “yes”; which is why we must remember Orwell, and definitely mustn't forget Huxley.

#7 在美國，傳統媒體產業已經惶惶不可終日，四處尋找出路，這種先發焦慮是不是更有利于中國媒體軟轉型？
报刊和书籍更容易转型，因为它们的市场化较高；电视很难，因为中国电视有着畸形化的结构，且有意识形态和垄断的双重挡箭牌。无论如何，450亿元的外宣投资不会鼓励转型。

Q7: In America, traditional media are nearing their end of days, searching everywhere for a way out. Does this sort of early anxiety signal well for the soft transition of media in China?
A7: The transition will be much easier for periodicals and books, because they are more highly market-oriented; television will find it more difficult, because of now abnormally television is structured in China, burdened by both ideology and monopoly. Regardless, an investment of forty-five billion RMB for external propaganda will not encourage transformation.

#8 这个外宣媒体让我很困惑的，是不是会解决很多外国人就业的问题？
南加州大学传媒系尼古拉斯•卡尔教授有个精辟之见，他把中国政府通过报纸、电视和文化交流作出的一系列努力称作是“通过对外宣传的对内宣传”。换言之，对中国政府来说，让中国人看到他们在向全世界宣传中国文化更为重要。很多人在质疑外宣的效果，这是树错了靶子

Q8: This external propaganda media leaves me feeling quite confused; is it supposed to create jobs for a lot of foreigners?
A8: Journalism professor at the University of Southern California Nicholas Cull put it very precisely. He said that the Chinese government has relied on newspapers, television and cultural exchanges in a series of attempts at what is called “internal propaganda through external propaganda”. Put another way, the way the Chinese government sees it, letting the Chinese people see that Chinese culture is being promoted to the entire world is the most important. Many people doubt the effects of propaganda, seeing it as barking up the wrong tree.

#9 那么中国教授呢？在教室里，是否也需要時常自我審查？尺度是什么？
尺度？跟媒体的情形一样吧，存在于边界的试探之中。当年关于淫秽物品的界定在美国有个笑话：淫秽物品？它从来不能成功地用浅显易懂的语言界定，但是当我看到它时，我就知道它是。在中国，言论的非法与失当，也是如此吧。

Q9: What about Chinese academics then? In the classroom, do they regularly need to self-censor? And what is the yardstick for that?
A9: Yardstick? No different than that for media, it extends as far as people are willing to probe. Back in the day, there was a joke in America about the definition of obscene material: ‘Obscene material? I know it when I see it.‘ In China, whether speech is inappropriate or illegal, goes about the same.

#10 如果倒退回20年，有互联网，是不是社会看上去比今天更乐观一些？
呵呵，回到未来……80年代是中国60年最好的时光，那时，至少有“两个重大”——重大事情让人民知道，重大问题经人民讨论……想想看，用互联网实现两个重大，是不是更乐观一些？

Q10: If the Internet had been around twenty years ago, do you think society would have been a bit more optimistic than it is today?
A10: Haha, back to the future…..the eighties were the best years of China over the past sixty years. Back then, we at least had the “Two Majors”, the ‘Major Affairs The People Need To Know' and ‘Major Affairs The People Need To Discuss'…if you think about it, using the Internet fulfills both the Two Majors, isn't that a bit more optimistic?

Great Firewall v.s. Social Media

2009-03-06T00:39:00.001+08:00

It's a very long history for China to deploy censorship system( I think the legacy came from it's ever regimes since Qinshi Huangdi, the first emperor ). So although the current communist party were ever not so agile first when Internet was introduced to this country in early stage, now seems they are more boastful on controlling it with both technical and social deployment.

On the technical part. Great Firewall (GFW in short) in China is now seen as the most complicated one around the world for it's scale, consistency and super computing power behind the infrastructure. The economic boom in this country ensures investment of the system. It came from people and used toward people. So besides of domain blocking, IP blocking and http keyword reset, the government also tried DNS hijacking sometimes to test the tolerance from communities. Many web site patterns(like wordpress.com,typepad.com, etc.) are totally inaccessible here.

Along with the technical screwing, China authority also well borrowed the methodologies from their mature ruling on old media to control the Internet hierarchically . Just in the past six years, they have release over 10 regulations to curb people's right of publishing. E.g. the real name registration of blog give people many pressure to publish their free ideas. Also they monitor people's traffic to punish those free speakers to frighten others. They sent over thousands of net police to force businesses to do self-censorship to co-hunt the mouse in the racing game(like guiding each web site to remove 'malicious' content and report in a daily manner by setting up instant messenger groups). You may also have heard that many International businesses, including Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, "have to" comply to the local hidden rules. The problem became more complicated with such compromises. And that's reason I wrote open letter to Google founders in 2007.

But things always how double-sides. The tighter the censoring is, the more enemies it generated in this country. With the most recent crackdowns on Internet content with the beautified excuse of “anti-vulgarity”, we see more and more online protest including many creative cursing like the famous “alpacas”. The escalated censorship never faces such big challenges from the booming content in web 2.0 age. The new flat network of content sharing dramatically changed the paradigm of free speech. Each time the authority add new censorship rules, the blogosphere will not only outcry loudly to the whole world but also find new ways to bypass it before next wave of reactions from censorship. With the shifting of readership to more social media space, the public awareness of censorship was raised the same time. I guess there are over 10% percent of Internet users now fully understand the wall comparing less than 2% two years ago from a survey in Chinese Blogger Conference. Then there comes stronger will for circumvention. Many users in China can easily setup a dynamic proxy, using Tor, or setting VPN or SSH tunnel to get across the system. 10% can become revolutionary, isn’t it?

But we need more time to realize revolution. Blogging and Micro-blogging plays very important role to spread the meme not only about circumvention tools but also the censored content itself. As there’re already a 40M blogger population in China, the same time emerged a lot of creative ideas over anti-censorship in the past few years. While some prominent bloggers continuously promote the circumvention technologies, some other bloggers started to collaborate on legal actions to sue the ISPs cooperating with censorship system. It also raises the hope to disrupt the whole system with totally different strategy. I'm seeing the headache from China authority because of the challenges from any corners. The horizontal collaboration also distributes the risks of being targeted by the government.

So i believe anti-censorship is not simple a combat in one country but a global war. Social media shows the power of global connectivity without competency. For example, Psiphon could have better architecture than Tor, but i'm still trying to find some better ways with more convergences with social enhancement. We should apply a whole new horizontal model rather than top-down broadcasting of a single solution. China case can be a good sample because of both the complexity of censorship against variety of solutions. Based on our experiences, designing social-media-based advocacy programs and technologies would be much more cost-effective strategy in such nanny countries.

Today, I categorized the circumvention strategy into 3 layers, the connectivity, technology and fabric. The physical layer is important because of connectivity, so sometimes we need FON like project to maximize the possibilities of connections. I believe more entrepreneurs will find new business ideas to enlarge this layer for any incentives.

Above connectivity, Tor/VPN/Psiphon like stuffs provide tunnels to enable people to get across the firewall for any individual. Sometimes they are powerful because any censorship will be invalid theoretically. However, till today, I didn't see any technologies can fit for all circumvention requirement. The technical redundancy let people fed up, the same time introducing more technologies.

So there's the 3rd layer, Social Fabric, is emerging since 2007 by the co-computing of people networks and machines to spread information. Friendfeed, Twitter, Google Readers, etc. are playing as building blocks of this layer, forming the real many-to-many fabric like super-dense pipeline system to reach best result. As there are tougher crackdowns in China this year, we can see how RSS and twitter meme spread even faster . That's the possibility we can assert Social Media is the future weapon to disrupt censorship.

Btw, youtube.com was reported hitting the wall timely in China since yesterday in the period of annual Congress. And once again twittersphere kept best watching by over such a case which leads to a further step closer to freedom.

How blogging was born

2009-01-25T08:17:00.001+08:00

via @davewiner

I believe it’s true not as two people conversation but reflections within one blogger’s mind in micro-level. We have many meta ideas in mind deciding whether we share, the thinking process itself is valuable if we try to understand ourselves and find the magic co-incidence from others.

"Censorship by Chinese Blog-hosting Companies", by Rebecca Mackinnon

2008-12-02T00:10:00.003+08:00

Finally, Rebecca released her research works on self-censorship severities of those blog service providers in China. She was ever afraid when is right time to share the research to public. But Sharism works eventually when a best meme appeared, ha.

Censorship by Chinese Blog-hosting Companies

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blogs chineseinternetresearch)

Not surprisingly, there’s already a Chinese edition of Rebecca’s blog post in two days from Yeeyan.com community. The censorship system is really complicated in China, however, the social media mouse is gaining lead in the race.

Social Art and Social Artist

2008-09-10T05:17:00.001+08:00

On the panel of "Digital Community" Winners talk I moderated two days ago in Linz, the three speakers, including Iris Wu from 1kg.org, David Sasaki from GlobalVoicesOnline.org and Jeana Frost from PatientsLikeMe.com, all present the beautifulness of their web site and communities. So I call those rewarding winning sites "Social Art", and of course the people behind them are Social Artists.

So what really Social Art is? Let's try to define it. Social Art is very dynamic creation by crowds with 6 degree of separations. Someone with creative ideas can start from a small core by building framework to foster a community(for sure nobody there the first minute). However, the core framework can grow organically with open DNA and consistence on Sharism philosophy. The beautifulness, of course, is the big picture of so many mirco-behaviors vibrate in such community. So it can be seen as dynamic social artwork. Just like the big cluster of the clouds from the window of flight, Social Art is always changing to attract everyone of us to fly into it, or zooming in and out of it.

Then we need more social artists to create such core frameworks. Lets hope the rains of social creativities.

Why Godaddy.com was blocked by China without tears?

2008-09-01T00:29:00.001+08:00

// updates: Some twitter users reported Godaddy.com can be accessed again in China from last night on. It's not surprising thinking of Sourceforge and Wikipedia's sufferings back and forth.

Domain registrar Godaddy.com was blocked in China about one week ago just after the closing of Olympic Games. Same as usual, there's no any official explanation from authority on this blockage. Some bloggers like William Long in China guessed that it's because Godaddy provided a way for people to bypass CNNIC(The root institution managing .cn domains) to prevent people from registering domain names featuring the names of Chinese gold medallists.

Isn't it funny? But the most ironical thing is that Godaddy ever cooperated with China authority last year to suspend some human rights sites without warning last year to please China government. This time, not surprisingly, the rope hang itself.

When I read recent comments from Google CEO Eric Schmidt at “The Big Tent” event in Denver, I realized why these two G- are wrong:

Schmidt noted that the Chinese have a “Great Firewall” for censoring internet work and is so secretive that it’s illegal to describe it. “A rough summary is that if you don’t say Falun Gong,” it’s okay. The question, said Schmidt, is whether the Chinese are better off with Google than without.--- via Portfolio.com

Either blind about Google China's operation or doesn't telling the truth, Eric misled the audience that Google can do nothing in China but compromise. However, the truth is Google China made more self-censorship rather than just complying the local laws. Google China management wanted to satisfy authority to exchange some space for surviving. But they are wrong as Godaddy, the government won't buy in because there's never contract or agreement to protect them. The hidden rules in China will change all the time. Just like Godaddy's case, any cases can become your nightmare whether it's an event, a people's name, or a domain name. And the worst thing you can never recover is that you lost the support from users. There's only one government one business can please today or tomorrow, but there are millions of users one can't be fooled.

Last year, in my open letter to Google Founders, "The more compromise, the worse". I explained in some other occasions why Google lost market share time by time even they self-censor themselves a lot in this country. The China team not only did a very bad job losing all frontiers to their competitors in this fastest and biggest Internet soil, but also lost trust and loyalty from their existing users. With the same effort and resource to make self-censorship(they put more and more people on filtering system), they can fight back with their guns(technology, laws, user supports, etc.). They didn't complete any missions without accountability.

Once in a private talk with one senior officials of Google China, he was surprised when I told him the story China netizen helped Google back in 2002 when it's blocked in China the first time. Since they've forgotten it (are they googlers?), they won't care users too much today. However, Big Brother can never be satisfied, even one single day. Godaddy.com proved this thumb rule. Godaddy.com was blocked in China. Surely it's so bad to their business benefit from Chinese users. But some Chinese users said, "It deserved! No tears".

Fresh Old Artcicle on Guardian

2008-08-05T20:23:00.005+08:00

One of my old articles wrote for Guardian has just been published online after it's accomplishment about half year ago. Thanks to my diligent editor Leslie Plommer for the perfect collaboration months ago and eventually make the article published from hibernation. Now I need people's comments.

It's a fresh old article. If I re-write the story today, I would love to get more stories included happened recently especially this half. Shi Zhao, also my blogger friend and lead Wikipedian in China, told me the photos seem not so nice but too cynical. Ok, I will try to suggest editors next time. :)

Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

Global Voices Summit 2008 in Budapest

2008-06-27T17:22:00.001+08:00

Some links to this summit(#gvsummit08) I'm attending from 25th-29th

http://summit08.globalvoicesonline.org/

Live stream: http://www.mayvelous.com/?p=402

Twitter channel: https://twitter.com/gvsummit08

Twitter summize: http://summize.com/search?q=gvsummit08

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/event/global-voices-2008-summit

Photos on flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/gvsummit08

Global Inter-media Dialogue 3

2008-05-09T01:44:00.001+08:00

I'm now in Bali Island but not for the legend sea shore and historical views. It's the first time that I'm here joining the 3rd Global Inter-media Dialogue(GIMD), a conference backing by two distinction countries, Norway and Indonesia. Deputy Minister Wegard Harsvik shared me the story how this GIMD was founded three years ago: Indonesia was one of three countries(China, Indonesia and Vietnam) Norway conducted talks on human rights with. And eventually after those talks, Indonesia become more democratic and healthy on politics today. They win the friendship of Norway as well. So the two governments set up the conference quickly in month in 2006.

I enjoyed some of the sessions especially those about local issues and community practices, but more happily to see old friends( Ying Chan, Kavi Chongkittavorn, etc.) there. I was surprised with the coverage of this conference because the organizers did invite a broad range of journalists from almost around the world. Amazingly, Cuban journalist, Lic. Magda Resik Aguirre, almost flied around world to attend this conference. The first session I joined was about the minority coverage problem of current media where a guy called Said Ibrahimi came from Afghanistan added me more knowledge about this country on the situations of reporters, as well the problems in that not-far-away country. What should global journalists do with such issues? Be more participatory or be more professional watcher? How to keep ethics in extreme situations?

If we just think about such issues in traditional ways. I can't help because they are actually the all time issues bothering journalism the whole discipline. The common problem to journalism in any countries, of course, its prejudice and ethical correctness. In our session called "Global Happenings" most on China issue, I quickly shared the future journalism could be the best collaborative spectrum between amateur journalism and professional journalism by applying the new technologies especially those web 2.0 ones. The stories in China were actually telling not only the possibility of such blurring between amateur and professional journalism, but also the possibility to approach truth.

About the truth, actually it'll be forever issue in our society but a real challenge to current traditional media. Even we can see some stories from the mainstream media covering minorities timely, it may be easily eclipsed by the limited bandwidth and persistency of the media. However, since everyone of us has more channels today to get information, you can sense how important the future journalism will be with new media technologies. Further saying, if people can provide and well use the throughput of new information channels, they can find more supporting materials to support their co-perceiving the truth. Obviously, the traditional media and journalists should change themselves proactively to fit for the trend.

The last minute before I click "publish" of this post and go to the Bali beach, there's a new notification from Twitter telling me one of my friends Maria Trombly recommended a new article about journalism: The future of journalism. Though there are different perceptions on the future of journalism, the holy thing to me in Sharism age is that you can meet magic of coincidence with new technologies all the time. Isn't it part of future journalism?

Sharism Slide

2008-04-09T22:45:00.001+08:00

Just re-posted to Slideshare, yet to have another video explanation on BigThink.com.

| View | Upload your own

Some pages on Slideshare were changed on color palettes and drawings positions. But seems slideshare is still the best place to share presentations.

Something about GFW behaved recently

2008-04-08T23:31:00.001+08:00

It's really bizarre recently after a series of blocking and un-blocking by the censorship system in China(GFW):
- Youtube was blocked after 3/14 tibet riot
- Youtube was released two weeks later
- English BBC News released 25th,Mar.
- Wikipedia English site found unblocked on 1st, April (not April Fool), including https://secure.wikimedia.org
- Wikipedia https://secure.wikimedia.org blocked again two days ago on 6th, April, because Chinese version of Wikipedia can be accessed via this channel
- Flickr picture farm1, farm2 found unblocked yesterday (7th, April)
Etc.

How do you think if the Olympic Torches behave the same?

Micropipeline as unblockable infrastructure

2008-02-16T22:02:00.001+08:00

As more and more people are now on various social applications(over 10 types of such Social Software), Micro-pipeline is also emerging to show how information can flow over different kinds of social application from people to people in a more efficient way than traditional media. We can predict that "Micropipeline" as a new concept will be studied more in the coming years to see how this infrastructure can be applied to form a larger scale of social fabric to make the world more flat and equalized.

For different kinds of social application, we can now link them easily by importing/exporting their RSS/Atom feeds. In this way, they can be connected like a pipeline system(Do you still remember the classic fun game "Pipeline"?). Meme with XML format can flow over different pipes to reach different users eventually . There are different kinds of pipeline building blocks in the system including pipes, Tee joints("T"), and elbow joints, etc. Since there are more and more such type of components can be chosen by users, the system becomes more complex than a traditional one-to-many system(like the urban waterworks). The many-to-many relationship between those building blocks can generate non-linear chain effect that maybe possible to amplify little voices into big bang. It's the new type of media, "Social Media".

I'm making an illustration on "Social Media" big picture by putting some typical "Micropipeline" applications on one map to show how information could flow from one person to mass population by routing those pipelines and possibly generate impact. Of course, the value of the original meme should be recognized along the path. Traditional media like "Reuters" is no more than a super node on such a big map. The picture is not finished yet, but I would love to share some draft works to get your comments to improve it.

Someday in near future, I think the connection between different pipeline application won't be just limited to RSS. They can eventually "talk" to each other in more flexible and semantic way. Some new kinds of authentication methodologies like OpenID could be applied in such scenario to ensure that information are authentic enough. And I'm sure XML-based Microformats will play key roles in future picture.

Micropipeline will be more important to some totalitarian countries like China to confront it's censorship system("Great Firewall", or GFW in short). Those seems-redundant building blocks(like Google Reader v.s. Bloglines) just more helpful to build fault tolerant media pipelines to serve people in such countries. E.g. It's found that Soup.io were blocked two weeks ago by GFW in China:

As feared, we've been blocked in China again.

Soup user kunshou has posted some new suggestions on how to circumvent the block (in Chinese). Should these fail, Tor remains your best bet.

This is an unsatisfactory state of affairs for our Chinese users – but as much as we'd like to, we can't just keep changing our IP address every day.Sorry! :( ---[via Censorship evades Soup, has stronger kung-fu]

Bloggers got very angry(Chinese) on such blockage with curses all the time. But they are now becoming smarter to build more complex personal pipelines to avoid of single point failure. They switched to FriendFeed.com as the alternative solution to burn their social feeds as life stream. And their subscribers can response as well to keep their information pipes flowing at normal level. The same trick applys to Yahoo Pipes! when people found Feedburner was blocked in China half year ago. If it's a mouse and cat game, the mouse seems faster and smarter now.

For the draft illustration shown above. I'm actually using Zooomr as the picture link here instead of Flickr since the later one has been blocked in China as well. However, I believe they can't block every picture sharing site around the world to kill themsevlves. So I think it's a great hack that we Chinese can survive in such a Social Media age. We can even change the country in a longer extent for sure.

No Sharism, No Democracy 2.0

2008-02-06T16:10:00.001+08:00

Just watched the "Super Tuesday" gala via many ways, the Twitter+Google mashup is the coolest one. But after reading Richard Dreyfuss's comments on how to teach our kids on the concep of "Democracy" and how to foster the love , I realized that the real democracy is still a long way to go. That' is how to maximize the enlightment of "collective intelligence" to cover all human brains.

There are still silent majority in our world( even in those so-called democratic countries) to eclipse the value of democracy. But with the longtail of sharing with different kinds of social applications, human's intelligence is possible to be aggregated to upgrade the established democratic system. We can call it Democracy 2.0. We can all see the changes in the new presidency bids 2008 in US, as well in Taiwan and other more wired countries.

Twitter's "Super Tuesday" experiment is cool, yet to improve in two directions: firstly, more inclusive to enable people to express in such a micro-way; secondly, to aggregate such intelligence and merge into the future design of democratic system. Twitter is killer app because it amplifies the sharing mechanism from explicit sharing to subtle sharing. It works just like the membrane to exchange materials in between cells. Sharing of such nano-sized memes can be easily adopted by users to open their mind to connect them with the social voice space. Those with such tendency of sharing can understand the return of sharing step by step. It's a kind of spiritual practice I called "Sharism".

Sharism, then, plays very important role inside people's social tendency. In the presidency racing, people were actually reluctant to vote or express because of their weary of the procedures and results. In democracy 2.0, people were enlightened to share their opinions. And if they found their any opinions are collected and respected, they will be encouraged to participate further steps. So Sharism fosters a continuum of participation of the democratic system, even effective after the voting with its open-end power.

Without considering such spirit in democratic system redesign, I'm afraid, the more problems will emerge in the next decade over the current democratic system around the world. The emergence of second super power won't just be a utopia, but a driven force to change the world. The news about a Chinese former professor set up a new political organization called "Chinese Netizen Party" won't be just April Fool as well.

What's the social media means to professional journalism?

2008-01-23T16:03:00.001+08:00

During the talk over "Social Media" as Luncheon Addresss(Slide) at the conference of "Changing Dynamics in the Asia Pacific: Power Politics, Economic Might, Media Challenges", I also presented the situation of the "lonely family" of Hu Jia.

There were bloggers tried to send powder milk the small girl last week, however, it's still impossible to break the cordon to enter and conduct. They didn't give up though. More tools will be expected to be used to make things smarter. You can find Hujia's house in a vivid way from Google Maps(same using Google Earth). More bloggers are called to join the action to update the map time by time. And furtherly the leaks can be found anyway to save the baby.

| View | Upload your own

I hope the audience really understand Sharism in such a context because it's really relevant to each of us. And most importantly, I've got a lot information from the local bloggers meetup last night and some insights from other speakers in different panels.

The Video Documentary from Hujia and Jinyan

2008-01-18T22:45:00.001+08:00

Some friends has posted the video document "Prisoners in Freedom City", cameraed by Hujia and produced by his wife Jinyan, on Youtube. Although the story is well known on blogosphere even traditional media(not including Chinese ones). I have to say that it's very movable after watching over all seven episodes(they were seperated due to the limitation of Youtube, obviously). Many Chinese people are freer than before, however, when is the tipping point to a substantial change in this country. Olympic 2008? Seem impossible just from Hujia's case.

Bloggers are now talking how to send milk powder to Jinyan to save their one-month old daughter QianCi because all the food channels has been blocked by security police after Hujia's arrest. It is not a game, it's about life.

updates: Where the family located(on Google Map and Google Earth) and BBC4's interview after Hujia's arrest

More on "Human vs. Machine"

2008-01-07T13:11:00.001+08:00

Tim O'Reily just compiled some ideas on "Huamn vs. Machine: The Great Challenge Of Our Time". It actually suggested that an emergent inflexion of web 2.0 to be re-invented to a higher stage. The next stage will be the well designed mashup of human computing and machine computing which I used "P2R Computing" to described it before. I think it's better to expand the idea to reflect Tim's one.

Google was being very successful in the last past 8 years. They found a basic fact of Internet content democracy and formed the super search algorithm "Page Rank" to enable thousands of machines to work in a parallel way to support large scale indexing and searching request. The creative design of Adsense model helps Google collect money from large scale eye balls along with the booming of search behaviors. Undoubtedly, Google can earn more from the "Big Number" effect and for more years.

However, what I'm sure is that Google merely itself can't bear is the global change of content structure since the new paradigm that Web 2.0 leads, whatever their investing in more machines, adjusting the Page Rank algorithm, or more activities to be more 2.0 alike. The problem to Big G is the internet content granularity has been dramatically downsized by both people and new kinds of technologies(like RSS and Atom). The connectivity between information will be not only described by physical links between web pages, but also a new layer of social filtering yet to be articulated by more new innovative social applications(like those RSS readaers, twiter.com, soup.io, etc.). Some recent found fake sites can present itself as a real content destination from Google's search results, however, they are actually generated by machine programs to make money for their authors. The downsizing of virtual hosting and domain costs makes such things easily be mass produced. So actually, Google's machine algorithm is now facing their distributed siblings from other hosts everywhere. Of course, people will be unsatisfied more and more.

Social Search, a new but long discussed concept is the right time to emerge in the coming two years(Am I optimistic?) Just a quick simple example first: When I search Google about "Human vs. Machine", I can find Tim's article, but obviously it's not at a relevant position in my mind. And I can't find any referential information to this search result. I switched to another mashup tool with the same query string and found more interesting results. I'm sure some of the links were really what I want and most importantly my own mind told me some are really relevant with some of the names I know and trust. Recently I compared many such just-in-case searches for in real context, for either blog composing or reference search, the "nearly social" search wins more than Google. Google may argue that skillful users can also realize social search based on their algorithm, but obviously Google didn't index well in some cases I met (though I found Google added one missing index days later). The fundamental problem is Google still slowly adopt social layer in their base service. The missing link, Social Ranking(SR) , should be be introduced into future search system.

The Social Rank(SR) concept, which can be a perception inherited from Page Rank, yet to be developed deliberately based on one's Social Portfolio(I dislike the term "Social Graph", either from semantic or public acceptance) and calculated in a large enough scale to ensure its accuracy. Your Social Portfolios on each social application sites(Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, etc.) will be crawled frequently to compile your SR. The more content you generated on those social sites, the higher your SR could be(but not linearly correlated). The trust relationships to connect those "Social Portfolio" will be another key factor to be compiled into your public SR. The people with best Sharism virtue will be recognized in this way. Like Tim, Joi Ito, Stehphen Downes, Dave Winner, Rebecca Mackinnon, etc.

In my humble vision, people will get more information in a streaming way from their daily social context instead of today's individual keywords-driven machine searches(In some countries, the portal way still dominate, though). Their activities will be logged and fed to their trust circle. Your Social Portfolio with its inherent sensing capability will help you aggregate "right" information to avoid of a problem of "don't know what you don't know". The Micro-pipeline is in shaping and more applications will emerge to support such "information streaming" time by time. Like Soup.io's experiment.

The basic unit of the fluid in the micro-pipeline will be micro enough to support almost everyone's participation and easy aggregation and remixture. Both Atom and Micro-format are in this category. But it's questionable to apply larger granularity work as base content unit, like wiki. So Wikia's effort could be on a too complex direction at least from the requirement of social searach on mass participation perspective.

Eventually, Social Search will be an entropy game, Google won the first round because they found the algorithm to map the less complicated web 1.0. And who will win next round to resemble the web 2.0 variety?

Great Wall, unchanged

2007-11-15T07:48:00.000+08:00

Just finished a fabulous "Museum" day in London. We started at morning to meet the speakers of the evening debated with a rough topic on "The New China: What does the First Emperor's legacy mean in a globalised world?". We met some really interesting guys to exchange some interesting ideas(including a recent eco-protestor who put mask on a warrior's face, which could be seen as an emergency if it's in China), actually I just feel the debate would be more like a panel discussion without flame wars.

We were taken by Jane Portal, curator of this over-half-year-long exhibition of "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army", to make a short touring. I was exited that it's the first time I see clearly real Terracotta Warrior. Its simply amazing not only because of the whole exhibition format navigated in a creative logic, but also the works themselves. Actually, its very hard to imagine how people keep the craft skills in such a media-less age and mass produce so many warriors like modern factory. As a trained engineer, I was too much impressed by the process of engineering. Unfortunately, those techniques wasn't respected and reserved to keep China a innovative country in the later centuries.

Our debate, as one of the parallel program with the exhibition, attracted about 300 people. My blogger friend Cathy Ma was lucky to get a seat because of my speaker advantage. It's very hard talk for the speakers including Me. Jon Snow from BBC Channel 4 moderated the panel after Neil MacGregor (Director of the British Museum) gave a warm-up speech. Then four speakers including Jonathan Fenby (auhtor a the book Jiang Kai-shi) , Sun Shuyun (documentary producer ), Steve Tsang, and me started our talks over "legacy" based on the understanding from different background. I mentioned the "Great Firewall" behind China Internet users is just the legacy mindset of "control" by communist rulers. And the most wise choice for the ruling party is to remove it to prove their over-propagandaed harmonious society and peaceful rising. The collective intelligence from counting Internet users won't just wait for the non-progressive democratic regime if they don't like to change their mindset. Unfortunately, we didn't see such change even after the passing 17th Party Congress.

China Ambassador, Ms. Fu Ying, also joined tonight's event. She commented that the best way to understand legacy is to forget it. It's somewhat a quite safe comment for her role. I was told she is very nice and smart lady though Steve remind me to be cautious after I return China. I noted but somewhat feel easy with that. It's not the first time I speak publicly about Great Firewall in China. It's truth that everyone should knows and change it together. I'm happy to see there are more and more Chinese Internet users(especially those millions of bloggers) started to talk about it explicitly and try to find constructive solutions to persuade government to rethink about this stupid mindset. In a modern globalized China, we don't need such legacy, instead, we need inherit the blood of creativity in Terracotta Warriors.

I enjoyed the talks from other speakers too. They are all China experts rather insightful than me about the history of China. I didn't see the flame wars in the debate though. Some friends told me after the debate that I'm somewhat too optimistic to the future of China. I think I should be because the paradigm of the whole world is changing from 1.0(top-down) to 2.0(bottom-up) even the Great Wall mindset unchanged today in China.

The Guardian, cooperator of the debate, will have podcasts published online soon to get the full script and audio of the debate. Stay tuned. (update: The guardian podcasting has been published here and Jonathan's long review of the debate, "Continuity and change")

Conferencing spectrum: between 1.0 and 2.0

2007-11-13T01:20:00.000+08:00

I was in Beijing in the passing three weeks joining a series of conferences: The 3rd Chinese Blogger Conference, Orange Labs Web 2.0 conference and China Foo(Foo Camp China). Now I'm in London preparing a non-technical talk at The British Museum, just as a relaxation.

As one of the organizer(we call volunteers) of Chinese Blogger Conference, I can't make very objective telling to the conference on whether its successful or not, but we did make some sparkling because people including the audiences made it together. The collaborations and collective intelligence are dramatic like the post-conference wiki-style report on Memedia.cn. We tried hard to make the conference a platform to demo some new ideas and technologies, including SNS, micro-blogging, tagging, personal portal and other mashups. Jiwai.de, a young copycat of Twitter.com, shined a lot at the conference because they provided a big screen to link people inside/outside the conference hall to publish their any ideas about the conference and sessions. We collected over 100 bloggers resonations and over thousand photos on either Flickr or Yupoo(no wonder we were very optimistic about the future of social media in China). Thus the cnbloggercon was very 2.0, though the conference hall we selected is very 1.0. So I rate the Chinese Blogger Conference is 1.8.

The web 2.0 conference by Orange Labs Beijing chose their office space as venue. It's very creative space with two-righ-angled areas(Like "L") between the aisle. However, the content and format are somewhat boring though I myself was one of the keynote speakers the first day. It's not easy for a tradition business to advance itself to web 2.0 pace, actually Orange Labs made a lot effort to ensure the success of the conference. I'm sure that most of the audience are very 1.0. I only saw few blog posts after the conference, neither from Orange Labs people themselves. Benjamin's post is quite good though I wish there were more. The conference is somewhat 1.0 with a 2.0 venue. Overall, I rate it 1.2 . :)

For China Foo, based on a very popular event in US, is also well known in Chinese geeks and entrepreneurs community. Plus O'Reily's brand name, many people told me they wanted to join the first Foo Camp China event. Unfortunately, many of them can't make it because of the time lag between Chinese Blogger Conference and China Foo(5 days gap between the two events). So I guess only those in Beijing can particitipate easily. And unluckily they chose a bad hotel without high quality Wifi installation. I can't make the full day participation because my flight was reschedule by London host to one day advance. But we don't need worry about people's passion on it, there were also many pictures posted online about this event. And whether As overall, I rate it 1.5 .

So we can see the conference world is pacing its way to 2.0 age, however, there are still many resistances attached to them in different context. Just like Rebbecca said, in those one close to 2.0, you will feel being spoiled, by contrast, you feel annoyed in those conferences still 1.0. I yet to study the differences of output in a accurate way, but the feeling is there. The next meeting I attend will be expected very 1.0, what's the feeling I will be?

10 Emergences May Lead Us to An Intelligent Future

2007-10-06T18:15:00.000+08:00

Just finished my talking at Ci'Num conference, a event with very Frech context trying to predict the future of "our" society and response to the possible changes. The talk is very condensed due to time limitation. But I have shared my slide online for audience's future check-back.

What I want to share in the conference is telling people that the world is changing with many sutble and micro signals. We may feel them everyday, but we can't grasp them or control them in anyways. And if you are not experiencing those blogging, web 2.0 servies, you won't be able to feel those nano-sized changes happened everyday.

We can see more and more Chinese people started to involve in the emergence of "The World Think Together". Just a recent case as instance, there are already thousands of people gatherred on Facebook to support Burma people. And many Chinese people in this social networking service has been impacted. The interesting thing is that most of them are bloggers and I can predict that they will transfer the message to their audiences as relaying. That's the another emergence I talked "Social Media".

The format of the conference is good. They also invited some International people like me to join and try to expand the border and understanding. The problem is how can such a short period can really understand the complex world.

Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism

2007-09-29T13:13:00.000+08:00

In my talks on PICNIC'07 about Sharism, some people commented that it is actually the new bottle of old theory of Communism. I think he may not really understand the real meaning of Sharism though I myself also carefully introduce the new term. And it's a concept to be evolved by itself.

Sharism(分享主义 in Chinese) is about sharing, for sure. It means a tendency of sharing your works(everything) to be used by your social network(or public domain), but still keep your right and property based on your consensus. It's really not strange concept especiall after blogging and web 2.0 stuffsemerged for years. As well those new copyright movements, like Creative Commons. You can practise sharism anytime by communicating with others, writing blogs, posting photos, or organizing an offline meetup to generate some group discussions, etc. And step by step, you can feel the change course that you are becoming more open-minded.

An avoidable question raised along sharism. What's the incentive to people if they would like to share? The answer if very simple. You share one piece, you can get times of return. The current social norm may always suggest people that be careful of sharing, otherwise you will lose control of your own stuff, or maybe very dangrous to love prvicy? Is it true? Let me use a metaphor to tell you that actually sharing is in a new space that won't hurt your privcy, instead it shows new possibilities and upside to everyone.

As the figure shows above. There are a big gap between privacy and publicity today that many people may not realize. So actually, the knowledge spectrum could be broken to most of us. The gap,however, has big potential to become a valuable space for social creation and sharing. Many people, however, still have no idea how to bridging the gap because they are over-concerned about privacy. It's not strange because there are still many abuse on Internet that people can't afford to fight with those bad behaviors with individual power. However, it's also a paradox. The less you share, the less power you have. And the more you share, the possible you get social support and become seems-virtually but truely powerful. You can start from small practise, e.g. from a personal blog, harvest small. Then decide how to invest more to get larger return. The gap will transform into a social space belongs to yourself can eventually can help you to maximize your social capital.

Sharism is human nature long timeline of life. It should be accumulated everyday, instead of looking forward any favors from others. And it can be practised anytime anywhere without insulting others right. So its not a big untouchable utopoia like Communism, nor absued political hype of Socialism. It's actually very personalized mindset and practical spirit. Those really experienced blogging, web 2.0 and creative commons, can easily understand what's the real meaning of sharism. Even those people with suspicious and concerns to sharism can find the value of sharism if they try to publish their opinions online, try it! :)

PICNIC'07 Amsterdam

2007-09-27T21:40:00.000+08:00

I'm now in Amsterdam attending PICNIC'07 and visiting some old friends. PICNIC'07 is really fancy event but it's the first time I'm linking with this fusion. Though it's still conference 1.0(means it's highly well organized). it's much different from those boring traditional conferences, on both format and content desgin.

The whole event is actually held in Westergasfabriek, a park orginally a warehouse used to store industrial gas. Liu Yan, Director of DaTong China Desk and my host for this event, told me that it took about two years to bury and cover those wasted stuffs of the old factory. Now the park is a cultural facility well used for creative conferences and activities and of course it's also a good place for community usages. (I just saw a big chicken idol jumpped over the conference hall, you can see such fun stuffs in this confernce appear anywhere)

I met Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter(as well Odeo and Xanga, etc.), for the first morning here. It's very interesting that his real name is Isaac, same to me. And we joked together how people rest of us always make mis-spelling on "Isaac"(not Issac"). I think Biz must be very suprise how I am addict to Twitter and was with ODEO.

One of my best friends, Kaiser Kuo, was also invited to speak at PICNIC. He is really qualified to several aspects of the event since he was a rock star, colunumist and digital strategy guru. Since he is so qualified, he was scheduled with several talks and one keynote. Ha, he is gifted and well used.

I will speak the next afternoon in a panel called "Creative Entrepreneurship in China". It would be the second time I talked about creation in China and the business opportunities. The last time was in Beijing on "TTI Vanguard" conference. The topic is actually around why there are more and more creations emerged in China but why there are still many failures and risks to entrepreneurship in China. I was interviewed recently by Economist on the copycats phenomena in China and where's the original innovations. But the article didnt' mention my concern on the harms of creations from commited censorhips in front of Chinese people everyday. For example, just for this post, I really hesitate whether I should post some images from my Flickr collections on PICNIC or not because I know my readers in China won't be able to see those pictures as Flickr was blocked there. Maybe I have enough time to talk about it tomorrow, though I will still emphasize the blosom of Chinese creations in these 2.0 age...

WEF meets GFW

2007-09-07T15:34:00.000+08:00

Many foreigners attending World Economy Forum(Dalian) were cheering with Primeir Wen's remarks on "peaceful development". I don't want to argue it's right or wrong to many new comers to China and such platitudes speech. Because the "harmonioius society" theory from ruling party seems only best worked on censorship till now. Anyone attended WEF Dalian experienced actuall censorship when they want to access Flickr, Wordpress and BBC News, etc. Also some peopel found that Twitter is not stable in these days. They may not even know the recent mass crackdowns around the country to those IDCs and thousands of web site just because a new five year ruling party congress is coming.

Internet censorship system ever had a beautiful nick name GFW(Great Firewall) and now has a new Chinese kidding name Kongfu Net(Gong Fu Wang in Pinyin). The problem is now becoming more and more serious in China. But don't just tell the reason in a simple way(for Party Congress, etc.). Actually, it actually reveals the indepth social problems(food safte underneath water for years. "The more of ropes they throw out, the faster they hang themselves", another WEF blogger attendee said to me yesterday. I was shocked by the words, but totally believe it's true.

Interestingly, I found different behaviors of GFW at different places in Dalian. In WEF conference hall. I can never access Twitter site. However, it's possible in Hotel. And they share the same list of other banned sites(including Feedburner, Wikipedia Chinese, Wordpress, Flickr picture server, etc.) It could be caused by the uncompleted deployment to the distributed GFW blacklist to different ISPs and areas. The GFW blacklist is guessed a centralized database but synchorized to distributed gateway routers to different ISPs in different provinces. It's not so sure yet whether local authorities can access their respective gateway to edit the blacklist because we alwasy get report from users in different locations. But basically, we can be sure today that the centralized system is there.

Anyway, it's very interesting topic that GFW meets WEF. Its the real world of how China meets the world. How totalitarian meets open society. And how reality meets future. The interaction of China and world may face more and more such mindset conflictions in the coming decade, but we can believe the universal value of humanity can eventually win the future.

P2R computing(Cont.)

2007-09-02T15:24:00.000+08:00

(We are now in UBC Cafe to continue SBF meeting. As Ilya's talking on APAN conference in Xi'an, I backchannelled to write about the other parts of P2R computing. )

P2R computing is a new framework based on P2P computing. But the nodes becomes mixture of people and robots. And the interactions between people and robots become the new links of the new computing model. Thus it's totally different from P2P computing. The P2P computing was actually Peer to Peer, not people to people. So it's actually missing the link with social computing. Actually P2R is a really social+machine computing model which can transfer users micro-instruction into automatic computing.

Based on P2R base idea, we can see a big scenario that everyone has a robot hosted on some distributed server farms. Those robtos comsumes both computing power and storage of server machines. Thus the Internet can become real computing platform. However, those robots are not like crawlers from today's search engine because they are still machine insects without human interactions. The personal robots, however, serve only to their owners. In this way, the robot and the owner become a joint social identity of the real person. The relationship between People and Robot, can generate different scenarios: People2People, People2Robot, and Robot2Robot, etc. So P2R Computing actually can cover today's P2P computing range, also extend to future social computing realm.

I will try to follow the meme and discuss with more friends to generate more detailed architecture in a public way. I would appreciate your comments to see if we share the same ideas in any emergent angles.

P2R computing

2007-09-02T10:38:00.000+08:00

I was sleepless last night because of the meta memes and ideas of P2R(People to Robot) computing. I told my friend Ilay Eric Lee this morning that I'm afraid I can't drive fast enough because i was over exited the whole late half night. We are now in Zhujiajiao, a suburb town of Shanghai city with traditional China ancient water view. The Bum Cafe is very comfortable that we can enjoy the view and tea from the wooden frame window. So we can be more free talking about my memes last night.

The meme, is about People to Robot computing. I'm in long term addict to AI in last 10 years and followed the trace of some futurist like Ray Kurzweil about Singularity for a long time. The bridge between Singularity and today is machine computing. And more detailed, some intelligent agents running and serve people's requirements. The problem we are facing today is all the agent software(or generally termed as "robot") are not personalized for a specified individual. So I think there must be a new era for the interaction of People to Robot beyond today's P2P computing.

The idea is very simple: everyone of us will have a robot(or more) service running somewhere on Internet that helps you process any tasks with instant interactions. You can chat with the robot anytime and delegate tasks to robot to accomplish in a queue or get immediate responses for some questions. The concept won't be new to many people who ever played with IM robots. However, those robots are not for personalized missions, e.g. backup some files to server. The personlized missions will cover all human activities like Q&A, search, streaming entertainment and data backup, etc. If you delegate all those tasks to a robot, who can also represent you to communicate and collaborate with other people(or their robots as well), it will be very computing power consuming, for sure. So it can should be well designed on architecture to ensure both functionalities and privacy protections. (Now it's time to back Shanghai, the post is to be coninued...)

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