Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog: Even the virtual world has borders

Google’s decision to censor its results for Red China has been best explained at the if:book blog, where it’s submitted that the internet is not so much a global network, but a virtual representation of the planet’s nation states. It shatters some of the optimism in which the World Wide Web was founded, but it is a force that globalists—or those who support the idea of the web uniting all people as neighbours—need to be aware of:

As Jack Goldsmith and Timothy Wu explain in an excellent article in Legal Affairs (adapted from their forthcoming book Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World), China, far from being the boxed-in exception to an otherwise borderless net, is actually just the uglier side of a global reality. The net has been mapped out geographically into “a collection of nation-state networks,” each with its own politics, social mores, and consumer appetites. …
The case of Google, while by no means unique, serves well to illustrate how threadbare the illusion of the borderless world has become. The company's famous credo, “don’t be evil,” just doesn’t hold up in the messy, complicated real world. “Choose the lesser evil” might be more appropriate.

I still have a lot of sympathy for the view that Google was only after the money—after all, when companies ﬂoat publicly, a little of their soul is lost. It happened to Yahoo!, and this may be the sign of Google “jumping the shark”. If that is the case, people might now move on to the next brand that helps them unite with the rest of the planet: the desire to network across borders, I believe, is a human trait, not just one of computer geeks.
As Ben Vershbow concluded at if:book:

Part of us desperately wanted to believe Google’s silly slogans because they said something about the utopian promise of the net. But the net is part of the world, and the world is not so simple.

Unless, we make it simple—roll on the next service. I’m going to hold on to that belief as I grow Lucire into print in different nations.

Posted by Jack Yan, 02:14 permalink

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An earlier post, dated January 13, illustrates just how hard it is to do business when the Politburo cracks down on you. For every foreign company there, there are ﬁve local companies who can do the same job, argues Jared Kim, who had one of his servers conﬁscated by the Internet Security division of the Public Security Bureau of the People’s Government in Red China. ‘China is making companies play ball by the local rules, and if those companies don’t like those rules they can ﬁnd another court because there are many other players willing to take their place. Foreign companies don’t have a gambling chip in this particular situation,’ he blogs. ‘Google [or] Yahoo not censoring search results? Shut them down and have everyone use Baidu. MSN or … Blogger not censoring blogs? Shut them down and have everyone use Blogcn.’

# posted by

Jack Yan: 1/29/2006 07:34:00 AM

We have to realize that the Net is not disconnected from the real world, it is indeed part of it. This doesn't mean that we should stop nurturing greater ambitions but we need to take reality into account as well. This reminds me of a column I read recently in le Monde where the author noted that Western nations (the US and Europe) need to realize that the world is a heterogeneous place. He was referring to Iran but the same logic applies.

# posted by

Robert de Quelen: 1/29/2006 06:00:00 PM

How very true, Robert. Cross-cultural dealings are a constant reminder—and I have noticed the United States become more detached from the rest of the world in the last few years, in particular. Every day I am reminded of this as I contrast business dealings there with how they were 10 or 15 years ago.
Meanwhile, the post-election riots in the Palestinian areas lately are another sign—a western onlooker might see the fervour there as uncivilized, but there are cultural and political reasons for them, and they do not make the participants “less civilized” than their counterparts in a western nation.

# posted by

Jack Yan: 1/29/2006 08:31:00 PM