Tannishblog

Sometimes it’s the little things that have the greatest impact.

Sometimes its big things with unforeseen ramifications. This Internet is one such big thing. Just as no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, so no one could’ve expected the blogoshere. In China, a nation known for a tight control on its denizens, the web is empowering the people in unexpected ways.

AS Nicholas D. Kristoff reports:

The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match - the Internet.

The collision between the Internet and Chinese authorities is one of the grand wrestling matches of history, visible in part at www.yuluncn.com.

That’s the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde. He made a modest fortune selling Chinese medicine around the country, and now he’s started the Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net - one of four million blogs in China.

[…]

My old friends in the Chinese news media and the Communist Party are mostly aghast at President Hu Jintao’s revival of ideological slogans, praise for North Korea’s political system and crackdown on the media. The former leaders Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji are also said to be appalled.

Yet China, fortunately, is bigger than its emperor. Some 100 million Chinese now surf the Web, and e-mail and Web chat rooms are ubiquitous.

The authorities have arrested a growing number of Web dissidents. But there just aren’t enough police to control the Internet, and when sites are banned, Chinese get around them with proxy servers.

As I’ve noticed before, the Internet is leveling the playing field in many ways, shaking up the power structures in some cases. In China, the authorities are being taken to task, and that is happening in America, too. Knowledge, it is said, is power. So is a secret; yet the Internet is making established powers less able to keep their secrets, as is evident from the above story.

As information is shared, more unique expertise can be applied toward useful resolutions to problems. Democracy can only be strengthened in numbers working in Internet time, Now maybe, we can use it not as a form of political power, but as a form of self-governance – as originally intended by the Greeks.

The Internet, through its proxy as the voice of the people – all people – will spread, establish and maintain global egalitarianism better (and cheaper) than any military force. All we need is patience; the Law of Unintended Consequences is in play here. The Internet allows everyone with access to a computer a chance to be heard. Now that web availably is common, I surmise many in the Department of Defense (and like organizations worldwide) are wishing otherwise, but it cannot be put back into its box. The consequences of an Internet-worked world are just beginning to show. This, more that military mobilization, will promote Democracy.

And it’s about time!