September 2010

Here's the great event we are living through today: the breakup of the atomized "mass" audience and a shift in power that goes with it.

What would happen today if someone on television did what Howard Beale did? Immediately people who happened to be watching would alert their followers on Twitter. Someone would post a clip the same day on YouTube. The social networks would light up before the incident was over. Bloggers would be commenting on it well before professional critics had their chance.

The media world today is a shifted space. People are connected horizontally to one another as effectively as they are connected up to Big Media; and they have the powers of production in their hands. The people formerly known as the audience wish to inform media people of our existence, and of a shift in power that goes with the platform shift you've all heard about. Think of passengers on your ship who got a boat of their own. The writing readers. The viewers who picked up a camera. The formerly atomized listeners who with modest effort can connect with each other and gain the means to speak -- to the world, as it were. Because the people formerly known as the audience have arrived, the journalists formerly known as "the media" are here, too. And this is what you -- the next generation of professional journalists -- have a chance to define for the rest of us.

The digital revolution changes the equation. It brings forward a new balance of forces, putting the tools of production and the powers of distribution in the hands of the people formerly known as the audience. And so you have the opportunity to become the journalists formerly known as the media, carrier class for a new understanding of the people "out there" on the receiving end of what journalists make. I say "new," but it is really just another chapter in the long struggle to make good on the idea of a public that knows what is happening because it pays attention, informs itself and argues about what should be done.

Indonesia's Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring ruled that all Indonesian Internet service providers had to start blocking access to porn by August 11th (the start of Ramadan).

As of this weekend, Sembiring appears to have backed off the deadline slightly, giving ISPs one month to implement a filter that would block access to porn. But the ISPs are at a loss as to how they're expected to do this. So far, all that Sembiring has apparently told them is that they should use the same keyword filter app that the government uses internally, not realizing the massive difference between a work-level filter and a country-wide filter. Also, it seems to ignore the ridiculous limitations of a pure keyword filter. The ISPs are, instead, saying that if there needs to be blocks, at the very least, the government should supply them with a list of sites to be blocked. They also warn that an Internet-wide keyword filter would likely slow down Internet access in the country.

Google's technological lead over Baidu has eroded, the company's former China head has said, highlighting the increasing challenges western Internet companies face in the world's most populous Internet market. Kai-fu Lee said western Internet companies had no chance in China unless they build a more nimble and flexible local presence and retain a strong technological edge. "Multinational players [must] hire the right senior people and empower them to have the flexibility to win [in China]," said Mr Lee, who resigned as president of Google's operations in China a year ago. "Another way is if you have a technology that's way ahead of everyone else. Google had some of those things [but] Baidu became good enough." Lee said Chinese Internet companies such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba were likely to retain their stranglehold on the Chinese market as misgivings about China held their American rivals back.

Brazil's telecommunications regulator Anatel unveiled a new plan for achieving the country's universal service targets. The PGMU III as the plan is known will cost BRL 2.1 billion, which will be invested in infrastructure and maintenance from 2011 to 2015. The reviewed goals for universal telephony cover rural and poorer areas, with plans for the installation of public telephone booths in all rural schools and rural health posts in Brazil.