January 13, 2006
Censoring the Mother Ship
I can be pretty dim sometimes.
There I was, in China – note, CHINA - merrily surfing the internet. How odd, I thought, that I could not seem to access Wikipedia to do my usual research on music artists, or check the facts I might want to prod into the open on my blog. How odd, I thought, that I also could not seem to access my own personal blog to check the publishing format. Must be a problem with the hotel’s network, thought silly old I.
The penny only dropped this morning when I read the Globe and Mail’s Adam Curry). But it meets 99% of my requirements for definitive information in a fraction of the time it takes me on the Googlenet.
In fact, I would even go so far as to say that Wikipedia allows me to use the internet in a way that is much closer to my platonic ideal of what it should be. To understand what my ideal is, imagine Captain James T. Kirk (pick your favourite) boldly going off somewhere in a blur of stars, presenting a proud profile to the camera on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, and asking “Computer, what is ZZ-Top?”.
In my mind, the computer coming back with THE answer, as best as could be found, is a large part of what the internet should be. If Captain Kirk got 750,000 web pages to read instead of a nice clear answer, he’d have a lot less time for killing Klingons and a lot less viewers.
So my heart goes out to the Chinese, deprived as they now are of an indispensably helpful ship’s computer. Unfortunately, since the Chinese government also seems to have blocked everything.blogspot.com, they may never know of my sympathy.
There I was, in China – note, CHINA - merrily surfing the internet. How odd, I thought, that I could not seem to access Wikipedia to do my usual research on music artists, or check the facts I might want to prod into the open on my blog. How odd, I thought, that I also could not seem to access my own personal blog to check the publishing format. Must be a problem with the hotel’s network, thought silly old I.
The penny only dropped this morning when I read the Globe and Mail’s Adam Curry). But it meets 99% of my requirements for definitive information in a fraction of the time it takes me on the Googlenet.
In fact, I would even go so far as to say that Wikipedia allows me to use the internet in a way that is much closer to my platonic ideal of what it should be. To understand what my ideal is, imagine Captain James T. Kirk (pick your favourite) boldly going off somewhere in a blur of stars, presenting a proud profile to the camera on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, and asking “Computer, what is ZZ-Top?”.
In my mind, the computer coming back with THE answer, as best as could be found, is a large part of what the internet should be. If Captain Kirk got 750,000 web pages to read instead of a nice clear answer, he’d have a lot less time for killing Klingons and a lot less viewers.
So my heart goes out to the Chinese, deprived as they now are of an indispensably helpful ship’s computer. Unfortunately, since the Chinese government also seems to have blocked everything.blogspot.com, they may never know of my sympathy.
