Walls and Bridges
By Michael Swaine
The communist dictatorship in China has decided to embrace the Internet. In doing so, the Chinese government has honored a 2000-year-old tradition by putting a wall around its bit of Net turf. The Chinese Internaut of the glorious future will navigate a web of government-controlled, sanitized, politically correct, firewalled intranets. Or so goes the 2000-year-old thinking.
If the communists had not purged their intellectuals when they took power, the old men currently in power might have someone around who could explain to them that the Great Wall, for all its majesty and massiveness, didn't do anything to prevent the civil war that immediately followed its construction.
But maybe I misjudge these men. Maybe they're trend-spotting futurists who are jumping onto the Internet and intranets because of their intuitive grasp of what's sexy.
The Internet is sexy, but not in the way the (noncommunist, nondictatorial) government of Germany thinks. The German government, with 2000-years-more-recent experience regarding walls that have ceased to wall anything in or out, nevertheless seems to think that it can restrict the electronic flow of ideas across its borders.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to pile up that the United States government has trouble understanding the concepts of free speech and privacy in a networked world. Dictatorial or democratic, it is the nature of government to try to control.
I'm inclined to believe that speech on the Internet is already essentially beyond the control of national governments, and I think that's a good thing.
