[plug] What do you school-age members think of SlashDot'sHellMouth articles?

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Tue, 4 May 1999, Leon Brooks wrote:
> > On Tue, 4 May 1999, Greg Mildenhall wrote:
> >> The 'net takes control
> >> of the media out of the hands of the centralised powers, and
> Bit sweeping a statement, Greg old chup.
> The 'net provides an _opportunity_ for people to sidestep censorship.
I'm not talking about censorship, I'm talking about the chance to get
one's point aired to the masses. In the past, radio, television, print was
the only way to get your views disseminated across a society. This
focussed a huge amount of power over people's way of thinking in the hands
of those with influence over the very few central media providers.

The 'net changes everything. I can broadcast, you can broadcast, we can
all get our point across to whoever is interested. If noone is interested,
then that's probably because our points are not interesting - a 
meritocracy of ideas rather than an oligopoly.

This takes a great deal of control out of the hands of those in power
(commercial power, not just political) and it is not surprising that
governments and the like are starting to rebel against this newfound
freedom to communicate - starting with the more authoritarian nations,
(China, Iran, Singapore) and slowly working it's way through the middle
rungs of the nominally free countries*. (Australia, the USA)

Of course, we of the middle rungs are far too civilised to be direct about
it, so it starts with vague wordings like "objectionable" that leave room
for fine-tuning once it has been determined how great the threat is.

-Greg


* Countries in which the political system makes superficial power-shifts
possible, but are for the most part just as unlikely to see fundamental 
changes in power distribution.