Google’s founders had some new comments to Google.cn’s self-censorship. It generated new disappointed feeling by many local Chinese Internet users for days. However, there are also supportive opinions to Google’s excuse. They worries that if Google didn’t do that, they will totally be excluded from China Internet sphere what I think it’s impossible.
Google can keep itself in China since Internet is ultimately boundless. Before Google formally operated in China, they don’t need any self-censorship or self-castrated. The protest of Internet users successfully released a blockage by China government in 2003 when Google didn’t hire anyone in China.
Google’s decision of self-censorship was made after Google’s business operation in China. Google’s motto and principles was changed by the local employees and local managers, then impacted to their founders by mistake. However, many google’s services, including search cache page, are still blocked by Greate Firewall everyday. I don’t think the compromise takes any positive effect to Google. And even worse, the market share still drops.
The ultimate way is keeping its universal value. If “non-evil” is a motto, it’s applied anywhere and even anytime. Otherwise, it will lose its value totally. Many people here in China, especially those geeks, hate the comprise by Google. Didn’t Google listen to them? Remeber, they are also opinion leaders to the market, no wonder the market share will lose.
The “worst” case is that Google withdraw the business operation from China, totally. Google service won’t be totally blocked, trust me. The Internet users won’t allow that. But will it be the worst case to Google, not really, it will revive the only hope in Chinese people to have a pure Internet from those disabled local web services.
Another viable solution I mentioned before is to Google is putting 1B US$ to accquire top 10 Internet business in China(except their rival Baidu) , which can be more realistic to ensure their business positions if someone still in the myth of money.
和Siduo, Zheng, Bruce 谈网络上的实体、人、时间、空间的多维关系，Siduo 提出了一个和时间有关的论断：那就是互联网，只不过是我们在某个时刻看到的一个横切面。这很有趣，把互联网和时间简史的关系谈了出来。我们所理解的网络，实际上都是每时每刻的一个快照。它们在过去可能是几座山峰独秀，现在可能是层峦叠嶂，未来可能是高原起伏。
想看到过去，我们已经有了Archive.org，如同我们看无数光年之前的星空，但是看到未来，我们还需要睿智的眼光和创造的能力，这就是创业和投资的艺术了。
I would like to articulate a bold vision to share with those who are also study information rules. To well explain the vision, I’d like to use a simplified metaphor. Let’s say all of us have a timeline floating with us. Aggressively, we can say all the information in your whole life has been decided by “God+You” to map into our timeline. God(the rest of the world) will push information to you, and you yourself can decide what you want to pull or consume other information. So all the information (whether historical or future) will be programmed to fall on the exact time point on your life timeline.
Isn’t it too fatalistic? Maybe. But it’s true in some way. If we assume this metaphor first, all of us will have to turn to next challenge. So the new goal can be stated as “how to make information come to my life instantly on time”, or “how to make right information arrives me on right time”. In 2.0 age, the “you” were empowered to be able to do more things on behalf of “God”, so you can help yourself to manage your information timeline. Trying to make information more accruate on delivery, we have to chop information into smaller and smaller pieces, aka micro-information(microcontent or more technically, microformats), then it’s possible to remix the sliced information to fit the goal above. It’s more like the scheduling tool in our life, or threading/process design in Operation System. Our whole life will be 2.0lized in this way to be more effective and multi-tasking. Our brain can be well utilized in this way.
Now there are some teams here and world wide share the same vision. They make different kinds of technologies to realize the “empowerment” from “God” in different ways. I do like to work or discuss with them. Isn’t it the bright future as Ray Kurzweil said?
Elementsoft 提醒我左边豆瓣的链接页面不正确，指向了一个需要登陆的页面。倒真的是一个疏忽。马上修改，不过还是有点不甘心，为什么这样一个网址(http://www.douban.com/people/mao/books)是需要登陆的页面呢？豆瓣一直领悟Restful URL比其他网站要好，因为杨勃理解URL易读性也是易用性之一。但是在某些小地方，还是有不透彻的地方。最直接地，就是应当向Del.icio.us 和Flickr 学习，此记录之。
晚间在HCI 2007网站上作日常维护，阅读一些需要评价的论文。退出前偶尔去修改了自己的Profile，发现有一栏信息很烦人，那就是传真信息必须填写，否则无法修改。心里上不想乱写，只好去查自己的传真号码。hoho，久违了，52343234(不是真的)。办公室里面已经把传真机摆放到了最角落，连秘书们也隔三差五地才到垃圾传真中试图找到一些有价值的东西。我自己更是多少个月份没有和传真打交道了。这些天和很多人聊“Always On”的时代，数字网络已经接近电力一样无所不在，是否还有传真机的空间呢？当然，今天说这话还早，毕竟不是还有很多人是垃圾传真的用户。不过电报消失的时候，人们真的注意到了吗？撕裂性的科技(Disruptive Technologies)总是悄无声息地出现，发力，终结，然后彻底改变格局和范式(Paradigm)，所以才有一段时间不观察，世界大变样的惊叹感觉。
做HCI 网站的人，大概还在天天用传真和同伴交换软件代码，否则为什么还要把传真当作必填字段呢？:)