internet

Must-read commentary by Open Society fellow Rebecca MacKinnon: "Are China's demands for Internet 'self-discipline' spreading to the West?" and a related post, "Google, China, and the future of freedom on the global Internet." And today, a related piece from MacKinnon, which includes the memorable line, "Never fear, netizens of internet-censoring nations, America is here to save you, galloping in on our trusty steed Google, brandishing our mighty weapon, Twitter!!"...

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Bear Parade is an online book publisher edited and designed by Gene Morgan. Each book on Bear Parade appears only on Bear Parade and is presented in a unique design by Gene Morgan.

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

To arrive at the edge of the word's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?

The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous.