There are two groups of people: those who affirm the Internet’s efficacy in the lives of individuals interacting in a Web 2.0 society, and those who refute it. I have found myself on either side of this coin throughout the years. Today, though, even the most stubborn skeptic will find it difficult to put the latest from Ellen Lee, staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, in a less alarming (and revealing) light.
In her August 5, 2008 “Web Chips Away at China’s Grip on Information,” she describes the recent trials of David Wang. An innocent bystander, David Wang created a “mock newscast criticizing Taiwanese officials” and subsequently uploaded the clip to Tudou, a social-networking site (SNS) in China which is centered around the dissemination of videos (a la YouTube). Days later Wang’s video disappeared.
Lee is fascinated not by the fact that the video disappeared – that seemed a foregone conclusion for such an inflammatory artifact – but by the fact that it remained online for several days. Lee cites this as evidence that China’s status quo may not be so static after all. In fact, in the picture she paints, Lee suggests that all the components of Web 2.0 – blogs and the many flavors of SNS – seem to be challenging normal hierarchies as well as traditional value systems. The result in China, she notes, “is the chipping away of what’s referred to as the Great Firewall of China, by which the government tries to control online content.”
In a fashion hauntingly similar to “big brother” portrayals of the past, such as Orwell’s 1984, Lee reports that one Shanghai IT employee found contradicting accounts of what happened during China’s Cultural Revolution and World War II. Imagining his position, and the feelings which he then experienced, is a powerful exercise. He describes his initial shock at realizing that the history he had always believed to be true was a mere fiction, and then describes anger upon understanding the deception to which he had fallen prey. How did he discover the truth? Through online forums and peer-to-peer services in which users’ greatest tool is not necessarily the Internet, but their cunning use of it (read more on this in Lee’s article).
Two aspects of this scenario attest to how palpably the Internet can be felt in our day-to-day, physical lives. First, this Shanghai man spoke only on condition of anonymity for “fear of retaliation.” Second, the Internet had been used to completely restructure the past for this man and countless others. Who could imagine how much a small historical revision and an Internet landscape with which to back a preferred narrative could change a young person’s development into an adult, much less alter the entire course of their life?
We’d be fools to think that this sort of revolution is just occuring in nations “new” to Web 2.0. As I remarked on July 31, consumers are beginning to be targeted by marketers primarily online, as that is where a lionshare of consumers reside comfortably. (In fact, marketing gurus – more certain than ever that their hunting ground is the Internet – are tirelessly refining their online efforts by seeking to better understand ours. For more on this, read Karlene Lukovitz’s latest on how online marketers are beginning to eschew email in favor of other online avenues.)
Despite all this, we need not feel afraid or uncomfortable, but rather simply aware and ready to answer pressing questions, such as this one: Are consumers the ones revolting, demanding through praxis that merchants follow them online or be ruined, or are the merchants in control, hunting us ruthlessly? Who is the cat and who the mouse in this developing chase?
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See
- Ellen Lee, “Web Chips Away at China’s Grip on Information,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 2008. [Click Here]
- Karlene Lukovitz, “Social Networking, Texting, Cell Phones Impact Email Effectiveness,” MarketingDaily, August 5, 2008. [Click here]