onfocus

I've been thinking about this New Science article on weblogs—The 'blog' revolution sweeps across China—and differing approaches to censorship. (Spotted on Joho the Blog: Bo ke.) This part about blogs being good at finding euphamisms is great:

But the net police found it much harder to purge discussion of Yitahutu's closure in the blogosphere. Bloggers are quick to find euphemisms so that they can continue conversation despite keyword filtering.

Keyword filtering and banning seems like a quaint way to control language. If Lakoff, Luntz, and Orwell have taught us anything it's that the power is in redefining words. I think about this whenever I hear the phrase activist judges. If you want to take power away from the judicial branch of the government, one way to do it is to make the word judge itself into a slur. (It worked with the word liberal.) And hey, why not take down the word activist while you're at it? That's so much more effective than trying to stop the use of the words judge or activist. People have to use these words to communicate, and by attaching negative meanings to them you force people to think negatively about the concepts these words represent. Philip K. Dick also nailed this idea:

The basic tool for manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

Chinese bloggers are practicing the new style of word-manipulation to route around an old style of control.

I took a break from my TV-fast to watch Frontline tonight. It was another excellent program about the media by Douglas Rushkoff called The Persuaders. It reminded me of this quote by Marshall McLuhan:

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commerical interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.

I think McLuhan's point is that anytime we consume electronic media, it's giving control of our senses over to a third-party temporarily. Right now you've entrusted me—some random guy in Oregon you probably don't know—with your eyes and attention. Your nervous system is processing this post and evaluating these words. Once *every* message entering our consciousness is paid-for by a commercial interest, we've given away our ability to have an authentic culture. What's hopeful about this view of media is that the choice is ultimately ours; we have some power over how much control over our nervous system we give out.

You know all those political video clips you've downloaded over the past couple of months? The group of folks at Internet Veterans for Truth has a good collection of them in one place. Let's Blogroll!

More info at waxy: Internet Vets for Truth.

The Newshour with Jim Lehrer is the only nightly newscast I've seen that tries to seriously cover the media itself. (And they do it infrequently.) Last night they had a segment about fact checking. It mentioned that being "balanced", or having 1 fact-check for one side and then 1 fact check for the other side in coverage isn't accurate if one side is actually lying or exaggerating more than the other. It's great to see this kind of critique happening on a major newscast because it helps viewers evaluate future news coverage they see (including Newshour coverage).

Related? Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Had WMD.