Sunlight is the best disinfectant. And many bloggers' eyes and typing fingers bring a lot of sunlight to whatever anyone is trying hide. This makes bloggers dangerous to many entrenched and powerful interests.
Not that bloggers are Martians, recent arrivals on this planet, to be treated as a 'special interest' group. Bloggers are people. And the Web gives people the ability to say what they think, to report what they see, to fact-check the PR outfits, to use their own individual expertise to parse others' arguments and, yes, to point fingers at the guilty.
And in many countries around the world, this is well understood. And acted upon. Harshly.
Here in the USA, some efforts have appeared here and there to place bloggers under some tougher laws, but that did not fly here. Op-eds against bloggers appear with some regularity, with the only result that the author has his/her reputation stained forever (google: Skube; google: PRISM; for just the two most recent examples of the power of blogs to uncover the truth, make it available to millions forever, and in the process make everyone know who the bad guys are).
Bloggers elsewhere have a much tougher time. As in "much, much tougher time". Just read this post by Mo.
Web is global. If a blogger somewhere gets imprisoned and tortured for telling the truth to the power, we need to speak up in defense and shame the entire country for it. It worked on Libya (google: Tripoli Six). It should work on others as well.
Remember: bloggers are people. And for the first time in history, people have a voice that can be transmitted to the entire planet in a matter of minutes. This is an immense power. We need to use it to do good.
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Technology
Comments
This should be the prologue for your 2007 Open Lab book.
Posted by: Kevin Z | September 3, 2007 8:53 PM
Amnesty International's irrepressible.info campaign is hugely related to this.
Posted by: blf | September 4, 2007 4:53 AM
Speaking of disinfectant you might want to check out
the Sunshine Week campaign to promote better access to government records. Speaking truth to power requires facts otherwise it's an editorial.
http://www.sunshineweek.org/
Posted by: Enrique | September 4, 2007 1:25 PM
blogs are weapons...so maybe collective experiments like scienceblogs are the "arsenal of democracy" that Jean Monnet talked about...
Posted by: Alvaro | September 4, 2007 5:58 PM
agreed.
Posted by: Kathy | September 5, 2007 7:51 PM