Isaac Mao

//南都专栏的内容略有和谐，请好事者自行用绿坝比对（主要是最后一段）

也谈对话

毛向辉

胡泳因看到了一些“网络意见领袖”在线上争吵的背后伤害和未来社会结构之间的矛盾，由此对中国社会是否有对话精神产生了极大的隐忧，所言极是。 我在推特(Twitter)上转发了他对哈维尔对话精神的《八条对话原则》，引来了一大批的锐推（相当于邮件的转发）。其中有一条很有趣，作者也是一位知名网人。他为八条原则增加了一条杜撰的尾巴：“后来，哈维尔到了中国，体验了一把中国特色国情。回到捷克，哈维尔翻出《对话守则》，增加了第9条：遇到傻逼，还是要骂。”一句话道出真谛，再怎么样做出尝试对话的样子，最后还是终止于一个词— “傻逼”。

所以中国人的国骂就是锁上对话之门的钥匙。话一出口，钥匙就断在了锁里，立刻失去了尊重的底线。门关上，就只能变成隔墙对骂。于是骂不绝口，口无遮拦。上至父母，下至体物。围观人群也是随时参战，一时间硝烟弥漫，战鼓喧天，一地鸡毛。这时候再拿什么冷静、理性来说话都为时已晚，如同用超七十码的车速根本刹不住一样。

这当然不是对话的方式，连辩论也都算不上。到了民主社会，辩论是必要的，因为其信息的最大呈现和逻辑推演，可以作为分歧存在，也是必要呈现手段和最优选择的基石。但是对话更是日常需要的，需要融合到生活的方方面面。没有对话，连辩论基础都无法达成，更不用说议事。中国现在有一批有热情的行动者，例如袁天鹏，正在努力推进罗伯特议事规则等议事方法。但是也时常因为对话文化的缺乏而无法进入到议事规则本身，这样就导致了难于前进的僵局。

对话为初，有对话，才有游戏规则的共识。然后才有辩论的氛围，此后才能谈到议事。对话之初的最大敌人就是威权，中国人在家庭内部就有压制的传统，进而延伸到教育和社会。“傻逼”其实就是威权的一种，是人们无法控制对方时所扔出的脏弹，和“老子要教训你”的直接控制没有差别。但是伤人一千，自损八百。父子无法对话，师生无法对话，官民无法对话，无不源自对这个“初”的损害。想建立民主社会，一方面要将威权解构，另一方面还要建构对话框架。

著名量子物理学家大卫·玻姆(David Bohm)对量子理论和神经科学贡献卓越，还参与了曼哈顿计划。但后来却因为臭名昭著的麦卡锡主义而被迫离开美国。于是他用其余生去研究对话的问题，这就是后来在学界商界政界都有深刻影响的“玻姆对话”(Bohm Dialogue)。其中包含了颇为人性的“不可协商”概念。他认为人和人之间差异过大，大部分情况下难以协商，也无法用逻辑和理性达成一致，很多不经意的争执都来源于此。既然承认“不可协商”的天然存在，却仍然要形成共识，就要用更有群体性和社会性的方法来转换“不可协商”的焦点。于是他和后来者（例如，彼得·圣吉等）也都提出过很多对话原则，经过教育体系的尝试，渐渐地影响了西方社会的很多层面。

玻姆对话中主要强调“自由空间”(Free Space)，保证能够得到最大程度的群体智慧(Collective Intelligence)。也就是在合适的对话尺寸下，所有的对话者应当遵循四个原则：1. 对话各方先不要做出任何决策；2. 暂停对别人意见的判断；3. 同时每个人应当足够开放透明（在第2点基础上才容易做到）；4. 在别人的基础上提出更多的建议。这几条原则看上去并不艺术，但是却时时能够帮助消解那些不经意的伤害，可以引导一个对话过程慢慢走上建设性。这些原则看上去简单，却很难在真实世界中得到实施，最好从很早期的教育中得到训练，这样才不至于出现难解的死结。当下中国社会，止损和维权虽然是第一位，从孩童就开始建构对话机制也刻不容缓。有了这些基础，才有更高水平的对话和群体的智慧，民主也就不是空谈了。 

“绿坝”事件是一个典型的对话失败案例。因为整个决策过程从一开始就不是一个对话过程，而政策制定者在事件被媒体披露后一再丧失了对内对话的良机。直到最后演化成为一个国际贸易争端，才不得不尴尬收局。这个暂停强制实施的结果虽然是受到欢迎的，可是过程的流血非常多，甚至严重地割裂了一个社会。免费的对话被推成了昂贵的与虎谋皮，不得不说是一个糟糕的反例。当然对老虎可以最终关进笼子进行教训，但是我们也完全可以不用笼子。相反要记得我们本来是为了打破笼子，所以眼下最需要的是一张张圆桌。■

How Bing.com censor Tiananmen
Originally uploaded by IsaacMao

By using blindsearch, we can easily find how Bing.com is a natural-born self-censor even to it’s US-based users. If you search 天安门(Tiananmen in Chinese), the different results set pops up than Yahoo and Google. It’s not the difference of order and page rank, but totally removal of those links about Tiananmen massacre. Some twitter users in China argued that it could be an conspiracy of Microsoft and China authority to exchange priority enforcing MS software piracy punishment by China government.

For Google, it’s smarter that they keep the full index for US-based users, so it’s always possible to get the real result from Google.com. Although Google.cn did self-censor some of the results, it’s good for people to compare and study the difference. However, it’s very strange to Microsoft, the Redmond-based business, do something stupid to give handles to any challengers from its home land. And it apparently eclipse itself on its business value. Another word, it shows people Bing.com just a subset of the knowledge around the world.

I hope GNI can keep watch on this case and push Microsoft to explain that.

from Global Voices Online » China by John Kennedy

Those faithfully following the #China Twitter stream late on the working day on Thursday were treated to a surprise when Isaac Mao began twinterviewing Peking University associate professor of new media Hu Yong, author of several books related to Internet theory and culture.

From Mao’s blog, Isaac 2.0, here is the transcript:

#1 作為中國最早感知互聯網浪潮的一撮人，當時和現在有什么差別？
当时是亚当和夏娃的简单乐园，现在“失乐园”了，成了丛林。盛行丛林法则。

Q1: As one of the earliest few people in China to sense the Internet wave coming, how do things differ now from back then?
A1: At the time it was Adam and Eve and a simple garden; now, “Paradise Lost” has become a jungle. The law of the jungle prevails.

#2 可是《數字化生存》并沒有考慮到那么多復雜情況，是否還是過于理想？
《数字化生存》的最大价值，是指出了未来社会的基本建构成分是比特而不是原子。这可以解释为什么今日众多产业面临绝境，也可以解释为什么中国政府花费那么大的人力物力修墙。当然，我那时和尼葛洛庞帝一样，是个乐观主义者，相信“闪闪发亮的比特”

Q2: Yet in “Being Digital”, things don’t seem so complicated, was it perhaps too idealistic?
A2: The main point in “Being Digital” was to point out that the society of the future would be constructed of bits, and not atoms. This can explain why so many industries today are in such dire straits, and can also explain why the Chinese government spends such vast human and material resources in patching up the wall. Of course, at that time, I was just as much an optimist as Negroponte, still believing in “shiny, happy bits”.

#3 可是我還是有疑問，尤其對中國，比特對傳統的思維催生變化了嗎？
传统思维的变化不是一日之功。比特开启了众声喧哗的进程：我们原来鸦雀无声，一旦有些机会说话，谁都不会好好说话，只会聒噪。但不要小看说话的作用：它是心理疗伤，疗中国千年专制之伤。

Q3: But I’m still skeptical, especially with regards to China; will bits bring about change in traditional thinking?
A3: Changing traditional thinking won’t happen overnight. Bits have launched a process of rising cacophony: once we were completely silent, but with the first opportunity to speak, nobody is just talking, they’re shouting. But we can’t undervalue the role of speaking: it’s the cure for a psychological wound, curing the wound inflicted on China by a thousand years of autocracy.

#4 正要問《眾聲喧嘩》這本書，大家是喧嘩了，可是獲取手段多的人似乎更焦慮，那么沒有信息的人似乎反倒很安逸，這是真諦嗎？
好问题！这就是为什么那些获取了更多信息的人要致力于发起更多的对话和讨论。有时候我们用新技术武装至死：我们如此陷入技术的拥抱之中，忘记了社会的基本面。今天中国需要的是对一系列社会的基本问题进行讨论：一个拒绝讨论重大问题的文明，不是导向极权主义，就是通向死亡。

Q4: I want to ask about your book “The Rising Cacophony”. Everybody is making noise, and those with the most access to it seem to be the most worried, while yet those people who lack information seem to be the calmeste, does that sound true to you?
A4: Good question! Which is, why are those with more information the ones having the most dialogue and discussion. Sometimes, we arm ourselves to death with new technology; caught up in the embrace of technology as such, we forget about the fundamentals of society. China today needs to discuss a series of fundamental problems within society; a civilization which refuses to discuss major problems, if it doesn’t lead to totalitarianism, then it leads itself to death.

#5 你的電視媒體實踐也產生了很多影響，例如CCTV-2的變化（我叫#CCAV)，是否更有相互比較的意味
我反对有人主张的对央视的新闻、宣传节目与网络都采取“不看、不上、不听、不说”的“四不”政策，因为每一寸阵地都值得去争取

Q5: Your experience in television media has had great impact, such as the changes at CCTV-2. Between the two, which has comparatively more significance?
A5: I object to any stance which advocates not watching, visiting, listening to or talking about CCTV news, propaganda programs or websites, because every inch of territory is worth fighting for.

#6 在《草根不盡》報告導讀中，講了媒體和權力的關系，新媒體似乎更激進地改變這種關系，但是也被有效地鉗制在一定強度內，縱觀媒體史，會亘古不破嗎？
福柯尝言：“权力得以稳固，为人们所接受，其原因非常简单，那就是它不只是作为说‘不’的强权施加压力，它贯穿于事物，产生事物，引发乐趣，生成知识，引起话语。”新媒体就是要既反抗“不”的高压，又反抗“是”的贯穿；既牢记奥威尔，更不忘赫胥黎

Q6: In the Info-Rhizome report, you say that within the relationship between media and authority, new media seems to more radically change this kind of relationship, but at the same time are constricted within a certain degree of influence; looking at the history of media, can that ever change?
A6: Foucault once said that, “[w]hat makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that is doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no; it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse.” New media, however, revolts against the high-handedness of “no”, but also revolts against the traversal of “yes”; which is why we must remember Orwell, and definitely mustn’t forget Huxley.

#7 在美國，傳統媒體產業已經惶惶不可終日，四處尋找出路，這種先發焦慮是不是更有利于中國媒體軟轉型？
报刊和书籍更容易转型，因为它们的市场化较高；电视很难，因为中国电视有着畸形化的结构，且有意识形态和垄断的双重挡箭牌。无论如何，450亿元的外宣投资不会鼓励转型。

Q7: In America, traditional media are nearing their end of days, searching everywhere for a way out. Does this sort of early anxiety signal well for the soft transition of media in China?
A7: The transition will be much easier for periodicals and books, because they are more highly market-oriented; television will find it more difficult, because of now abnormally television is structured in China, burdened by both ideology and monopoly. Regardless, an investment of forty-five billion RMB for external propaganda will not encourage transformation.

#8 这个外宣媒体让我很困惑的，是不是会解决很多外国人就业的问题？
南加州大学传媒系尼古拉斯•卡尔教授有个精辟之见，他把中国政府通过报纸、电视和文化交流作出的一系列努力称作是“通过对外宣传的对内宣传”。换言之，对中国政府来说，让中国人看到他们在向全世界宣传中国文化更为重要。很多人在质疑外宣的效果，这是树错了靶子

Q8: This external propaganda media leaves me feeling quite confused; is it supposed to create jobs for a lot of foreigners?
A8: Journalism professor at the University of Southern California Nicholas Cull put it very precisely. He said that the Chinese government has relied on newspapers, television and cultural exchanges in a series of attempts at what is called “internal propaganda through external propaganda”. Put another way, the way the Chinese government sees it, letting the Chinese people see that Chinese culture is being promoted to the entire world is the most important. Many people doubt the effects of propaganda, seeing it as barking up the wrong tree.

#9 那么中国教授呢？在教室里，是否也需要時常自我審查？尺度是什么？
尺度？跟媒体的情形一样吧，存在于边界的试探之中。当年关于淫秽物品的界定在美国有个笑话：淫秽物品？它从来不能成功地用浅显易懂的语言界定，但是当我看到它时，我就知道它是。在中国，言论的非法与失当，也是如此吧。

Q9: What about Chinese academics then? In the classroom, do they regularly need to self-censor? And what is the yardstick for that?
A9: Yardstick? No different than that for media, it extends as far as people are willing to probe. Back in the day, there was a joke in America about the definition of obscene material: ‘Obscene material? I know it when I see it.‘ In China, whether speech is inappropriate or illegal, goes about the same.

#10 如果倒退回20年，有互联网，是不是社会看上去比今天更乐观一些？
呵呵，回到未来……80年代是中国60年最好的时光，那时，至少有“两个重大”——重大事情让人民知道，重大问题经人民讨论……想想看，用互联网实现两个重大，是不是更乐观一些？

Q10: If the Internet had been around twenty years ago, do you think society would have been a bit more optimistic than it is today?
A10: Haha, back to the future…..the eighties were the best years of China over the past sixty years. Back then, we at least had the “Two Majors”, the ‘Major Affairs The People Need To Know’ and ‘Major Affairs The People Need To Discuss’…if you think about it, using the Internet fulfills both the Two Majors, isn’t that a bit more optimistic?

It’s a very long history for China to deploy censorship system( I think the legacy came from it’s ever regimes since Qinshi Huangdi, the first emperor ). So although the current communist party were ever not so agile first when Internet was introduced to this country in early stage, now seems they are more boastful on controlling it with both technical and social deployment.

On the technical part. Great Firewall (GFW in short) in China is now seen as the most complicated one around the world for it’s scale, consistency and super computing power behind the infrastructure. The economic boom in this country ensures investment of  the system. It came from people and used toward people. So besides of domain blocking, IP blocking and http keyword reset, the government also tried DNS hijacking sometimes to test the tolerance from communities. Many web site patterns(like wordpress.com,typepad.com, etc.) are totally inaccessible here.

Along with the technical screwing, China authority also well borrowed the methodologies from their mature ruling on old media to control the Internet hierarchically . Just in the past six years, they have release over 10 regulations to curb people’s right of publishing. E.g. the real name registration of blog give people many pressure to publish their free ideas. Also they monitor people’s traffic to punish those free speakers to frighten others. They sent over thousands of net police to force businesses to do self-censorship to co-hunt the mouse in the racing game(like guiding each web site to remove ‘malicious’ content and report in a daily manner by setting up instant messenger groups). You may also have heard that many International businesses,  including Yahoo, Microsoft and Google,  “have to” comply to the local hidden rules. The problem became more complicated with such compromises. And that’s reason I wrote open letter to Google founders in 2007.

But things always how double-sides. The tighter the censoring is, the more enemies it generated in this country. With the most recent crackdowns on Internet content with the beautified excuse of “anti-vulgarity”, we see more and more online protest including many creative cursing like the famous “alpacas”. The escalated censorship never faces such big challenges from the booming content in web 2.0 age. The new flat network of content sharing dramatically changed the paradigm of free speech.  Each time the authority add new censorship rules, the blogosphere will not only outcry loudly to the whole world but also find new ways to bypass it before next wave of reactions from censorship.  With the shifting of readership to more social media space, the public awareness of censorship was raised the same time. I guess there are over 10% percent of Internet users now fully understand the wall comparing less than 2% two years ago from a survey in Chinese Blogger Conference. Then there comes stronger will for circumvention. Many users in China can easily setup a dynamic proxy, using Tor, or setting VPN or SSH tunnel to get across the system. 10% can become revolutionary, isn’t it?

But we need more time to realize revolution. Blogging and Micro-blogging plays very important role to spread the meme not only about circumvention tools  but also the censored content itself. As there’re already a 40M blogger population in China, the same time emerged a lot of creative ideas over anti-censorship in the past few years. While some prominent bloggers continuously promote the circumvention technologies, some other bloggers started to collaborate on legal actions to sue the ISPs cooperating with censorship system.  It also raises the hope to disrupt the whole system with totally different strategy. I’m seeing the headache from China authority because of the challenges from any corners. The horizontal collaboration also distributes the risks of being targeted by the government.

So i believe anti-censorship is not simple a combat in one country but a global war. Social media shows the power of global connectivity without competency.   For example, Psiphon could have better architecture than Tor, but i’m still trying to find some better ways with more convergences with social enhancement. We should apply a whole new horizontal model rather than top-down broadcasting of a single solution. China case can be a good sample because of both the complexity of censorship against variety of solutions. Based on our experiences, designing social-media-based advocacy programs and technologies would be much more cost-effective strategy in such nanny countries.

Today, I categorized the circumvention strategy into 3 layers, the connectivity, technology and fabric. The physical layer is important because of connectivity, so sometimes we need FON like project to maximize the possibilities of connections. I believe more entrepreneurs will find new business ideas to enlarge this layer for any incentives.

Above connectivity, Tor/VPN/Psiphon like stuffs provide tunnels to enable people to get across the firewall for any individual. Sometimes they are powerful because any censorship will be invalid theoretically. However, till today, I didn’t see any technologies can fit for all circumvention requirement. The technical redundancy let people fed up, the same time introducing more technologies.

So there’s the 3rd layer, Social Fabric,  is emerging since 2007 by the co-computing of people networks and machines to spread information. Friendfeed, Twitter, Google Readers, etc. are playing as building blocks of this layer, forming the real many-to-many fabric like super-dense pipeline system to reach best result.  As there are tougher crackdowns in China this year, we can see how RSS and twitter meme spread even faster . That’s the possibility we can assert Social Media is the future weapon to disrupt censorship. 

Btw, youtube.com was reported hitting the wall timely in China since yesterday in the period of annual Congress. And once again twittersphere kept best watching by  over such a case which leads to a further step closer to freedom.

via @davewiner

I believe it’s true not as two people conversation but reflections within one blogger’s mind in micro-level. We have many meta ideas in mind deciding whether we share, the thinking process itself is valuable if we try to understand ourselves and find the magic co-incidence from others.

Finally, Rebecca released her research works on self-censorship severities of those blog service providers in China. She was ever afraid when is right time to share the research to public. But Sharism works eventually when a best meme appeared, ha.

Not surprisingly, there’s already a Chinese edition of Rebecca’s blog post in two days from Yeeyan.com community. The censorship system is really complicated in China, however, the social media mouse is gaining lead in the race.