Blogging, Systems and Change Agents: To India and Mana “With Care”
Posted in Civic Issues by wayne.porter on July 24th, 2006 I kicked off the India censorship issue with a few thoughts on India, BlogSpot and JS Injection. Let me hand people some bitter irony. If this ban had been in place at the time the researcher, Peter J., based in India, would have never uncovered the initial deception around the World Cup. The bitter cup of irony.
I have quietly watched the issue explode all over the blogosphere and cascade into the press and smack back into the ruling powers- all well summed up at the Moving Republic. The ruling powers are probably asking the same thing as The Hindu seems to hint- Who Knew Bloggers Had So Much Power? (Note I find the emergence of a formalized “Code” interesting.)
One simple sentence - “Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.” (the spirit of this sentence is widely attributed to Ben Franklin but there is debate on that.)
The Nanopolitan has it right, it is a victory, but not a total one. Is John Perry Barlow the new Jefferson-Franklin prototype with his declaration from the mid-90’s?
Somewhat in contrast to the India issue we have the interesting Blogospherific story of Mana blogging from the “Belly of Beirut” as Wired coins it.
Opps. I can almost hear the military minds grinding this one out…
“Someone forgot to imprison up the damn bloggers before the incursion! Jot this down on a yellow sticky note… Take out Internet infrastructure before the next attack.”
Will they take note of it? I am sure they will. Afterall it is hard to wage an attack when people will communicate as human beings and freely exchange ideas. Harder to wage bloody campaigns when THAT is going on.
In the words of Noam Chomsky:
“If we don’t believe in freedom of speech for those we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
In terms of Mana and the ongoing conversation I have one question lined with more bitter irony.
“What if you find out you don’t really despise them all?”
All of this started my thinking about about systems theory and one of the propositions of Dana Meadows:
“Pay attention to rules, and to who makes them.”
This led me to study some observations about systems and John Gall’s Systemantics…
- A system can fail in an infinite number of ways.
- Systems tend to grow, and as they grow, they encroach.
- As systems grow in complexity, they tend to oppose their stated function.
- Colossal systems foster colossal errors.
- Choose your systems with care.
With care…
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[...] Why, oh why does this remind me of the recent Indian blogspot “mistake” and censorship? (Yes Google i won’t let that JS Header Injection issue die will I?) [...]
[...] Steve Rosenbaum’s struggle with Adwords censorship really hit a nerve with me- more like a sense of loss- sadness- perhaps I was thinking of Mana’s blogging plight. I had to know more so I dug into the story and pinged everyone I knew. I dropped a line to Bennett Hazelton of Peacefire.org , Anne Mitchell of ISIPP and many other colleagues, even Yahoo!- and I plan to write more as well. [...]