Let Our Voices Shine

The web has always been about the proliferation and dissemination of information, but now what is deemed Web 2.0 is geared toward relevance, personalization, and interaction.  Freedom of speech has now found an immense platform.  Enter China.  Over a billion strong and developing in the global economy, China is poised to become a rival superpower, a title which the US has not had to share for over fifteen years.  Yet Chinese policy is extremely counteractive to the nature of Web 2.0.  Web businesses have already began catering to the restrictivism of China in order to maintain a share of the Chinese market.  This has led to arrests of individuals whose internet activities were released to the government upon request.  Do web companies hope to get a foot in the door, allowing them to soften the government’s restrictions over time?  Or will China gain such dominance through consumerism that they can dictate company policy?

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at 14.09 and is filed under Culture, Politics, Technology, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.