Blackout


Turns out the US too has a bunch of moronic legislators (like Kapil Sibal) who came up with their own version of bills to censor the Internet. As a sign of protest, several popular websites decided to take down their sites at different times. The latest on that list is Wikipedia that announced all English language pages will go dark tomorrow (Wednesday). To ensure people know why the site is down, founder Jimmy Wales, has decided the Wikipedia page will ask people to call their politicians and state their opposition to those bills. As Wales puts it, the aim is to “melt the phone lines”.

What if Google, Facebook and Twitter did something similar? And remember, no Google means no search, no YouTube, no Gmail, no Google Maps…It would pretty much be the day that the Internet went down!

As Wales said, “Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!” Imagine what would happen without Google. As one of my friends said, it would take a hundred years to write any software program without Google! And he simply can’t imagine having to go back to the Stone Age way of reading books to get answers: which would also be true for most of us.

Comments

  1. KumarJanuary 17, 2012 at 9:25 PM

    We must understand one thing.

    While worthwhile people create and contribute something, for the politicians creating and sustaining something worthwhile doesn't come by easily.

    So what do politicians do? They insist people respect them. There was a government order to that effect to the bureaucrats and staff some time back! They don't have to earn respect, they can simply get it by threatening, "Or else...". And, they gag anyone who criticizes them. And, this is as old as history. Sibal is neither the first doing this nor is he going to be the last. India's worst so far was Indira Gandhi during her infamous emergency.

    Yes, we should all do our best to protect the society from gags. And,no solution may be unique nor can anything be final. Gags keep varying so the anti-gag work should match the need of the hour.

    Having said that, do we see that media or equal can also be irresponsible, sensation-mongers, emotion-whippers, a gang that succumbs to the rot of commercialization etc.? Or, we want to look the other way about all that? Government gags may be bad, but we the people are indeed helpless against the mindless onslaught of the frenzied over-churning by the media - often nothing beyong time-pass activity done with vigor. How to stop getting dragged into all the muck coming from so many quarters?

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