fascist regimes are undermined by the internet

I may no longer be able to say that Google does some evil.

XIAO QIANG, director, China Internet Project, University of California at Berkeley

XIAO QIANG: Well, this -- we really should put this context of the Google event in a larger context, which is, it's not Google vs. China. It's more Internet vs. the authoritarian regime, the Chinese authoritarian regime, because, fundamentally, the Internet is an enabler.

It's empowering people the capacity to organize information, to effectively use information, and also to work together, collaboration, and even mobilize collective actions.

From those point of view, Google's services and products are just, for those leading services, empowering people to do so. And the Chinese government fundamentally cannot live in peace with such empowering factor of technology. Therefore, they cannot live in peace with Google, period.

So, when the Internet is getting larger and larger in China, the Internet users are more and more politically active, and the political speeches have become more and more proactive, then the government has to intensify its censorship measure higher and higher degree, and then to the point that the company like a Google cannot take it any more. So, this is fundamentally an issue of China's government vs. Internet.

Whether Google is there or not, the story will continue.
- Google's Threats to Leave China Renew Censorship Concerns

The offical Google blog announcement: A New Approach to China

Ethan Zuckerman has a more detailed analysis: Four possible explanations for Google's big China move:

• Google decided to stop being evil
• Google retreated from a very tough market
• Google abandoned Chinese users
• Google is about to join the front lines of the anticensorship wars (very interesting)

how to back up blogger

I couldn't get the official backup method in blogger help to work at all --> error message when I tried to save the new backup template

This advice from kookosity worked for me. ie. I could back up my entire blog but not the comments.

Hard to figure why google doesn't provide a decent backup service. Does that make them evil?

post mind

Who needs a mind, when you have google?

Tara Brabazon interview:

if we have a single problem of our contemporary age I think it is probably confusion between popularity and importance ...

students reference a great deal less (than in the past)

students are not able to tell the difference between a scholarly article and Time magazine

book review: The University of Google: Education in a (post) information age

The push to managerialism means that many more men in shiny polyester suits – arbitrarily given ‘vanity’ titles like Professor on the basis of position not scholarship – pace around university campuses. Not surprisingly, words like diversity and flexibility weave through their footsteps. Transferable skills, strategic plans, cross-sector synergies and generic competencies bounce along for the ride. By living (in the) Post – postmodern, postindustrial, postcolonial and postfordist – new, critical and reflexive spaces are created to build a postinformation society, one that can take the first unsteady steps to knowledge and wisdom

thanks, Daniel Livingstone