The Power of The Internet

The Internet is fast changing how politicians and citizens engage each other in the political and social arenas. With the godsend that is community sharing sites like YouTube, MetaCafe and WikiPedia, citizens have gotten increasingly involved and bold in their attempts to voice out and engage.

The incumbent powers that be are only slowly catching up to this game.

To wit, check out these vids by sgpolitic (thanks for the email!):

There are four by sgpolitic, which you can view here. Truly a few pictures speaks millions of words. “DIssension” within indeed. With a few cursory skills, these days any pundit can chime in their 2 bytes worth to an audience of millions far quicker and more effectively than Speakers Corner ever can.

The incumbent powers are slowly but surely catching on, from the PAP cyber-agents trawling the Net to allegations of MICA agents sniffing around and policing the general populace, it is clear that they aren’t stupid; just not that smart. Why? The way I see it, in every arena of play, be it movies, politics, the workplace, even the neighbourhood playground, there is that one constant struggle, the struggle for power.

I’ve been recently reading up on issues on terrorism and there appears to be a rift forming between the radical fighters in Iraq. Does the struggle justify slaughter of ordinary Muslims? This basic question of killing your own is creating a rift between those who think it’s ok and those who think it’s not. Figureheads will make mission statements and manifestos, but ultimately once you cut throw the vitriol, it boils down to a struggle for power, the (moral) right to lead.

We are also seeing this happening in the blogosphere, with centres of power forming here and there, examples include SingaporeAngle, IntelligentSingaporean, Tomorrow.Sg, TheVoidDeck, et al, and the various larger than life figures who stake their claims in these centres of power. Invariably, the constant rears its ugly head. The struggle for power, in the subconscious need to assert that their moralistic(?), intellectual or scholastic arguments hold true over others, the struggle for power muddles their intellectual-aristocratic minds. This is happening already, you just need to browse around.

In any struggle there will be casualties. Very soon we’ll see blogs and writers shutting down and calling it quits or cooling off. Like a flaming plasma vortex, these things tend to fizzle out. If I were the incumbent, I would just sit back, enjoy the show, and keep the train chugging along. If I can throw in a few logs to stoke the flame, why not.

You might argue that the Internet is a force to be reckoned with and anyone saying otherwise is gentrified, old-fashioned, passe, behind the times and dangerously about to be out-evolved. However, the way I see it, the only simple question that needs to be asked and answered is: Would you vote a cyber-politician into office?

http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=530

Blogging and the Law

On 18th January 2006, the Institute of Policy Studies organised a closed-door discussion on the topic of Blogging and the Law.

This is according to local bloggers mrbrown and Mr Miyagi,

They didn’t say much about what happened in this closed-door event except for some pictures. However the title of this closed-door event is interesting to say the least. Considering the venue, it’s very likely that the powers-that-be are considering legislating blogging. It’s pretty clear that this was mooted by the recent blogging/hate/Sedition Act cases.

In 2005 I wrote on this very specific issue. In it I proposed a self-policing or moderation policy as opposed to a throw-the-book approach that the PAP has adopted (clearly a political Send-A-Message).

However it would seem that the government is going to take this one step further by considering legislation on blogging, possibly also in view of GE2006.

To me, legislating blogging is missing the forest for the trees and reflective of the PAP’s neanderthal style. It’s analogous to flocking to a commotion in the street, seeing a loon hurling racial epitaphs at no one in particular, then getting offended and braying for a law to clamp down on talking in public!

While technology has changed, human nature hasn’t. Social ills and bad behaviour remain constant. There are enough laws to come down hard on these things. Bad behaviour exists everywhere, virtually or otherwise. If you open the floodgates of law on blogging, where does it stop? Websites? Forums? Mailing lists? Usenet?

http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=397

Arrests and Investigations. Neanderthal and Totalitarian

Yes yes, the Sedition Act and the 3 bloggers. Ok, but let’s take the whole picture into view. Let’s not cloud the issue with our emotions. What else have we got? Let’s open the PAP’s hope chest…

We have police investigations into Martyn See’s film about CSJ. We have police investigations into Jacob George, about his alleged affiliations with Martyn See and Terry and Peter (F’ing hilarious). We have investigations into white elephant posters at Buangkok. We have threats of libel and legal action by teachers against students for comments like “frustrated old spinster”.

WTF is this country coming to? A country of legal suits and police investigations? What is this, Russia circa Stalin? Never have I as a Singaporean ever come across a stage in our 40 years of history where there is such a climate of fear pervaded by our dear boys in blue. If you ask me this is worse than Konfrantasi… versus a clear and present danger, we are now combating an even more insidious “enemy”: our “protectors” from within!

What happened to PS21? Didn’t our dear PM preach a new generation of openess? Did our dear MM not tell one brave man in a university talk (oh so long ago) to do something about it, like <b>write a blog</b>? Did someone forget to insert a key somewhere and turn on some brains? Or do our leaders really have selective memory?

I beseech the authorities to stop these neanderthal tactics and do some introspection on your actions. Do you really in good conscience think these actions are right?

http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=370

Too much freedom?

The blogosphere is an mutant of the real world. It mirrors the interests, pet peeves and deep dark passions of the individual, yet lacks the inhibitions of the inner self and the collective, while at the same time comes together as a collective, by medium, as the blogosphere.

It is a mutant because it lacks the inhibitions of real life. The inhibitions of the animal psyche via human morals and public shame are torn down by the anonymity of the computer. Once lacking in inhibition, mad power comes in place. The psychotic power to say and do whatever they feel like it.

Inane blogs like XiaXue feel that anything and anyone is fair game, to a certain point. Socio-political blogs feel the PAP is fair game. But in any society, blogosphere included, there will be its fair share of psychotics. Witness the racist blogs that are slowly crawling out of the woodwork. I shan’t list links lest they grow more brazen, but suffice it to say, those in the know are aware of their presence.

Who knows what drives these blogs. What drives a racist? A bad encounter? Inbreeding? Society? Who knows, and you know what, Singaporeans are by and large racist to a certain extent. However, much mutterings of racism are behind closed doors or private circles. So what makes someone come out into the public to scream and shout, “I am racist!”? Mad power.

Like any society, someone should be there to maintain peace, law and order. I guess before we panic like headless chickens and start calling for the censorship of the internet, or even knocking on the Police/ISD’s door, we should be asking ourselves, “What can we as a society do to help ourselves?”

One good answer is self-policing. Vigilante group if you like. The vast majority of the blogosphere are decent, intelligent people. These people should call out these madmen, let they, the blogosphere and the world know that there’s no place for them.

A cyber lynch mob if you will. Round them up and lynch them.

Jihadi blogs? Now that’s a whole ball of wax.

http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=358

State of the Blog Address

Blogging has become God’s gift to socio-political commentators. WIth the folks at diaryland, blogspot/blogger and co, many have literally come out from the woodwork to all and sundry.

Many of these blogs (I can name many but I suggest you check out TheVoidDeck’s running list). I myself don’t have a blog due to reasons I’ve mentioned before. But for the benefit of those who don’t know I reiterate (hence this article).

Previously political commentary was restricted (for lack of a better word) to websites like TheVoidDeck and Sintercom, discussion forums like sammyboy and mailing lists like Yahoo. What these did was give people a collective avenue for commentary. In the case of forums, the members belonged in this collective and arguments put forth in a way conformed to a particular gripe or peeve. Such topics always centred around the hot topics of the day. Unless moderated, topics and threads were no-holds-barred.

In the case of mailing lists, it is similar in essense to a forum. However many lists were closed lists in that you had to be a subscriber to read and then post to it, creating secret enclaves of hotse… erm I mean serious discussion. Some lists made their message open but membership private so their message was pubished far and wide but its gripes/peeves/agendas conformed to the list owner(s).

Websites are more clearcut and obvious and the old and reliable guard, so there’s not much that needs to be said there (although I believe TheVoidDeck is kinda new in the game).

The interesting thing about the online socio-political scene was that our commentary was confined and controlled (for lack of better words) in these avenues. This created IMO collective and organised vehicles for disparate chaos. In other words in the chaos of many mailing lists and forums there was still order.

Then blogs came along and this changed the socio-political landscape forever. This awesome gift from the heavens allowed literally Tom Dick and Jane to grab a megaphone and scream from the top of his HDB block. Of course whether you wanted to listen was entirely up to you. However I liken this current scene to hungry hyenas roaming the wilds of Africa. Now note I didn’t say “pack of hyenas”, simply because there is no group dynamic, no order. They were just hungry hyenas. Sometimes if they ran out of victims to hunt they hunt themselves. There is no order. Only chaos.

In the end, it’s just block after HDB block of megaphone-screaming individuals trying to drown each other out by out-shouting each other. In the end all the arguments get drowned out by each other and it just becomes noise. What happens when it’s all noise? It’s ignored. When it’s ignored, people behind the blogs start wondering “Why isn’t anyone reading?” and get demoralised. When they get demoralised they start to wonder why they continue to write. Apathy *resettles in* and that’s what we cannot afford to have.

The number of socio-political blogs seem to be growing. Newest kid in the block is TheOptical’s Your Voice blog. While TheOptical’s blog is more in style with say Sintercom, I believe that there needs to be some order in this chaos. TheVoidDeck’s approach to linking them all together in a step in the right direction. However I do not see a good solution in the horizon. I strongly believe the growth of socio-political blogs will only be to the detriment of our online socio-political commentary. More so when moronic journalists group luminaries like xenoboy, i-am-a-comedian and shianux with fluff like xiaxue and cassandrappg.

PS I *DO NOT* think bloggers are hyenas. It was merely an analogy.

http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=293