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Information dissemination: The Rise



Subject: Information dissemination: The Rise of Dot-Communism 

Dear Burmanet readers,

The following article caught my eyes. As usual, wanting to share 
it with you - so did I. Please find an excerpt at the end of this
note.

In the article, one speaker said, "The Internet gives all a
voice, but maybe not direction". 

In another piece on the same thread. One said:
  . . "Dot communism, but . . . which kind?  Left or Right? 
      Communism (Left Socialism) = the government is the business. 
      Fascism (Right Socialism) = the business is the government."

What I'd like to add here is this, if I may. Since Internet, IT and 
ICT provide/facilitate us with a brand new window of opportunity, 
finding the right direction and sustaining it is our duty, after 
all. Isn't it?

With metta and respect,
Dr. Khin Ni Ni Thein
WRTC
 .................................................................
The Water, Research and Training Centre (WRTC) for a new Burma is 
a non-governmental, non-profit, educational foundation, explicitly
apolitical in nature, working for the Burmese peoples by promoting 
and improving their access to research and training opportunities 
and education in the water and rural sector in Burma and abroad.
P.O. Box 118, 2600 AC Delft, The Netherlands. 
http://wrtcburma.org
Tel. +31-15-2151814, Fax +31-15-214 39 22, E-mail nin@xxxxxx
 ...................................................................

'The Rise of Dot-Communism'
 by Theta Pavis
URL => http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,31922-1,00.html
Time and date => 3:00 a.m. 25.Oct.99. PDT

CAMDEN, Maine -- The dawn of popular culture is just beginning, John Perry
Barlow said in a speech at the annual Camden Technology Conference over the
weekend. And it's the Internet that has made it possible.

Barlow, vice chairman of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, argued that
because the media sells an audience's attention to advertisers, society has
been fed something that looked like pop culture but really wasn't.

"The people did not create this culture. This culture was created by power.
Now, people can manifest their culture and send it anywhere," he said. On
the Web, truth will have a bigger megaphone than money and "dotcommunism"
will win out.

"The Internet gives all a voice, but maybe not direction," said Alan Kay,
vice president for research and development at the Walt Disney Company. 
"It is extreme democratization, but we need to find a way to criticize these
voices. We have to understand now what the benefit or disaster of these new
technologies will be."

The Pop!Tech conference on popular culture in the digital age was also
notable for some of the things it lacked. Several speakers mentioned MP3s,
for example, but nobody discussed the format in depth. And only snippets of
pop and alternative music were played.

"I was like, where are the young people?" said Erika Dalya Muhammad, who
spoke on a panel about identity and is completing a PhD at New York
University on what she calls "cut-and-mix culture," including digital film,
contemporary and cyborg art, and music.

The young, urban artists Muhammad studies are devouring mass culture to do
"digital combat against mental colonization." Her hope, she said, is that
technology will allow some disenfranchised youth to learn their history and
"map their own identity instead of having it mapped for them."

<.....> to read the complete article, please go to the URL.
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