"But but but," I hear you protest, "what about the children? They're learning bad things online!" Yes and they used to hang out on street corners and learn bad things there too. Now that we're so scared of one another in real-life that we won't pop next door for a cup of sugar in case the lollipop man has a gun or is a paedophile, the web is our way out of our gilded cages."

Source: The Guardian

Read the rest of the article - I especially enjoyed the Cain and Abel reference.

<img style="display:block;margin-right:auto;margin-left:auto;" alt="image" src="

<p></p>
<blockquote>“The metaphor most commonly deployed by Jordanian officials when discussing Iran is of an octopus whose tentacles reach out insidiously to manipulate, foment, and undermine the best laid plans of the West and regional moderates,” one WikiLeaked cable reports.</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>Source: wired.com</p>
<p>Sounds familiar, doesn't it?</p>

The (latest, what with them having been doing more or less the same thing for the last four years) wikileaks saga has lit some new fires under the "what is journalism" discussion.

The answer is actually kind of simple.

Journalist - One who writes or keeps a journal.

journal 

Move along people, no sacred cow here.

"I don't like your style, your politics or your sense of humor. I don't like what you say or how you say it. From now on the fighting men of Vietnam will hear exactly what they're supposed to hear."

Zunga Zunga: Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government”

A few choice excerpts:

"The point of Wikileaks — as Assange argues — is simply to make Wikileaks unnecessary."

"the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire."

"To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship.”

"I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful…"

This could be applied to more than just governments, methinks.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/telstra-stacks-the-deck-in-social-review-339307644.htm

Regardless of the 'marketing morality' side of the WP7 review program itself (which was rigorously discussed during the #TelstraDesire version) it’s worth mentioning the “Oh, SNAP” value of the comments from reviewers in their own defence are absolute GOLD.

The internet wins today. Nice work.

Found this tonight:

[..]The invention of the web is comparable to Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1450.

Like the printing press, the web has already been credited with ushering in an age of enlightenment; it is hailed, too, as the most powerful harbinger of social change the world has ever seen. But this isn't the first time such claims have been made. Tom Standage, author of The Victorian Internet, has argued that the telegraph, in the 19th century, inspired rampant technophilia. "The telegraph was the first technology to be seized upon as a panacea," he has written. "It was soon being hailed as a means to solve the world's problems.

"It failed to do so, of course – but we have been pinning the same hope on other new technologies ever since."

Source: The Guardian

Which reminded me of this tripe.

What both of these pieces fail to take into account is the considerably simple fact that technology can not deliver anything more than those sending and receiving via that technology use it to do so.

For example, DB (author of the aforelinked, in case you didn't click through writes;

Television promised documentaries and education. We got Australian Idol and The Bold & The Beautiful.

The web offered e-commerce and sharing of knowledge. We got porn websites and Facebook.

Email promised instant communication. We got spam.

Seriously? No, WTF - SERIOUSLY?

1: Don't watch crap TV. (I'm sorry B&B, you know I love you.)

2: Tell that to Amazon. Or eBay. OR ANYONE WHO'S EVER LEARNED ANYTHING VIA THE INTERNET. (No seriously, I know like, 6 different words for "penis" than I did before it was invented. The internet that is, not the penis. Just so we're on the same page 'nall.)

3: I have no words for this last. The statement is such "twaddle" my internal organs ache from the irony every time I read it.

There's this common statement that I both love for it's accuracy, and despise for the ease with which it is used to misrepresent the potential of the digital realm. You may have seen it yourself a time or two:

The internet (or derivation thereof) is (usually 'just') an echo chamber.

Damn straight it is.

But it's a chamber in which those echoes are bound, contained, displayed and archived for the perusal of any and all so inclined, the echoes themselves the published thoughts, beliefs, questions and conclusions of whole generations, a repository of human inquisitiveness such as which has never been known in the history of our civilization, or those which came before.

So yeah, the web, and the infrastructure that enables both its existence, and the participation of its users to it is kind of a big deal.

"But what about the real world!"

It's still there isn't it? Or has your proclivity for watching hours of online porn and daytime soaps gone so far as to have actually removed your ability to go outside and sniff a tree, talk (you know, with your voice) to people, to shave the next door neighbours cat?

No? I didn't think so.

Technology - whether talking the printing press, the telegraph, the web or whatever the next great leap in communicative tech might happen to be - was never the problem.

Technology is incapable of making promises, let alone delivering on them within the expectations of those awaiting their fulfillment, save perhaps in the sense that technology can be the road, the shuttle, hell - even the packaging (including the bubble wrap) but at the end of the day, you need a sender, a driver, and someone to sign for the parcel they ordered in the first place.

People screw shit up. Just as much (if not more) than we do the opposite.

Technology in any of its forms is just another way for us to do both.

      “People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

- Jim Morrison

Fear not the coming battle, sweet
For I shall be your shield
Come wind or fire or waters deep
To no foe will I yield

When strength you've none
Your will undone
Then I shall be your blade

In conflict's wake
We quail, we slake
So dying, a victory's made

- Me