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Google's China Problem
Wraithfighter writes "The New York Times has a rather lengthy, but informative, piece on the origins of Google's current Chinese search engine, as well as a very informative look at how censoring is actually done in China. From the article: 'Are there gradations of censorship, better and worse ways to limit information? In America, that seems like an intolerable question -- the end of the conversation. But in China, as Google has discovered, it is just the beginning.'"
Having some experience with eastern European countries during their communist regime, I can tell you it really is just a technicality for day to day live.
On one hand, people first and foremost are interested to live in peace and comfort and want to see their children doing the same. If they can achieve this, the philosophical aspects of the current emperor of the land is of no importance. On the other hand, if they can't they will damn whatever emperor makes their live miserable and at some point will seek to improve their lot by exchanging emperor.
For the less philosophical level this means: If you starve or are terrorised by the killer squads, you don't give shit about if those responsible are brandishing little red books or are the stoutest supporters of free capitalism.
This all leads to the simple conclusion, that communism (as much as capitalism or all other -isms) are just minor technicalities only mostly happy people with nothing better to do can worry about.
There are still many ways to bypass the block. Assuming one knows that the web page exists. Thanks to this "optimization", this is no longer the case.
If the effect of this "filter that is no censorship" is merely cosmetic, then why was Google forced to include it or face being banned from operating in China?
A recent PBS|Frontline documentary covered how the Chinese government has gone about censoring one major event from its past including on the internet, it's free to view online:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/
Flamebait because he doesn't elaborate?
The U.S. is very good at withholding information. Not to unload too big a can of postmodernist wupp-ass on anyone, but it does so by creating whatever reality it wants. There STILL ARE/WERE WMDs in Iraq in the minds of many people because a chain of The New York Times, Judy Miller, Scooter Liddy, Dick Cheney SAID there were. Why _withhold_ information when you are the country with the Madison Avenue/Hollywood expertise to _create_ whole realities? When you have the mass seeing your reality, any "truths" are just insignificant background chatter.
I guess it was the comparison between apartheid South Africa and the U.S. where this first became glaringly apparent to me. Generally, South Africa dealt with dissent by "slips in the jail shower" and "suicides out the third floor window" -- excuses which are themselves shapings of reality, but crude post-incident excuses. It was only in the very latest years that they discovered the proactive power of advertising. If you aren't sipping KWV brandy in your decorated 10 room split-level in Soweto like the commercial shows you, it's because you're a LOSER. Doesn't have anything to do with politics.
It was their own fault it took them so long to discover advertising as a weapon. They only allowed TV in the '70s. In the U.S., we were born swimming in media and generally don't even recognize its inherent unreality.