Hanteng Liao at the OII

按:這一篇是得到科普獎第二名的文章, 供參考做未來改進並延伸

Continue reading ‘網際網路的第一堂課’

The latest technique in drawing cartogram is based on the concept of “diffusion” in physics. Here I use the cartograms to show the “Internet diffusion” in East Asia:

Area Cartogram: East Asian Internet Users from 1993 to 2008

There are several notable observations from these cartograms that would be more difficult to see with only tables or charts.

• Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong is the regional early adoptors of Internet use, which is mirroring the regional economic development since the end of Cold War.  (cf. East Asian Tigers)
• China and Vietnam become notable and prominent late adopters, catching up or even surpassing the development in Thai and Indonesia.
• The fact that China and Vietnam become prominent may be geographically linked to Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan because they are geographically close to them.  (i.e. the relationship between East Asain Tigers and China plus Vietnam)
• Coastal cities and provinces of China are the early adoptors within China, which become comparable sizable late adopters in the region of East Asia, with population size sometimes bigger than an East Asian country.

Therefore, the “diffusion” of Internet users could be explained by geo-linguistic factors, with Vietnam and China as interesting cases (in comparison to Thai and Indonesia).  China and Vietnam is thus hypothesized to become major Internet users partly because of the geographical (closer to Japan and East Asian Tigers) and linguistic-cultural (part of the Hanzi-sphere or ‘Confucious’ meritocratic culture) factors.

I have made a series of cartograms for the number Internet Users in East Asia from 1993 to 2008. Any advice to do an animated flash with a time line?

Internet Users in East Asia, 2008

I have uploaded the 2008 cartogram to the Wikisource under the Creative Commons license.

I have also attached a snippet if anyone tries to use this cartogram in Wikipedia or Wikipedia’s sister projects.

English:
[[Image:EA_Iusers_2008.jpg|thumb|350px|Area Cartogram: Internet Users in East Asia, 2008]]
Chinese:
[[Image:EA_Iusers_2008.jpg|thumb|350px|2008年東亞網民分佈的面積統計比較地圖]]

Now the cartogram of the Wikipedia’s presence in East Asia national languages in 2009 shows the strong performance of Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese.  Not too bad for Malay, Indonesian and Thai.  Very weak for Mongolian, Laotian, Burmese and Khmer. Recall that according to the ITU in 2003, Nordic countries, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Finland and Asian Tiger economies of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, dominated the top-ten global digital access rankings.

If one compare the cartogram for East Asia in the post and that for Europe in the previous post long enough, the Wikipedia seems to have a “geographical” preference for certain coastal area.   It reminds me of the historical development of submarine telecommunication at least hundred years ago, when Denmark not only used telecommunication development to maneuver between big European powers such as Britain and Russia, but also played a pivotal role in connecting East Asia with their submarine telecommunication capacity.

So who are the Danish-like people now in East Asia to promote and benefit from the ICT development in the region?  I tend to think it is not just American entrepreneurs or Chinese bureaucrats, as most previous research has suggested, but some one else.  I will leave the question for another blog in the future.

Some commentators, especially from China and South Korea, has suggested that Wikipedia does not fit East Asian culture and argued that the local competitors of Wikipedia, the major ones of them are all services provided by major national/local search engines, serve the people better. The below choropleth map may challenge such an argument on two grounds. First, Wikipedia is popular in Japan, Vietnam and some Chinese-speaking regions like Taiwan and Hong Kong. Second, even Wikipedia is not as popular in South Korea and China, the sheer number of articles Wikipedia has, along with the other cross-lingual capacity of Wikipedia project, should have some influence on users there.

However, I have to agree with the commentators that language and culture do matter. (I am not easily convinced that all versions of Wikipedia is inherently Western and thus not Asian or local enough.) One of the most politically and technically controversial issue in East Asia is the role of Hanzi (or Chinese characters) in the deployment of ICT now and modernization in the past.  However, it is interesting to note that the countries of Hanzi-sphere, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and even Vietnam, has experienced higher-than-regional-average literacy rate (digital or otherwise) and economic development. Thus it is interestingly paradoxical when some commentators suggest the East Asian language writing systems hinder the modernization (or diffusion of Western technology and ideas) while some other suggest the opposite, the meritocratic part of Confucian culture helps the diffusion of digital literacy and ICT deployment. Which one is more correct than the other?

All these arguments have to be tested and substantiated with more evidence other than just the number of Wikipedia articles. Otherwise, people may be caught up with the number myth by believing number means absolute growth, which has been the major if not the only indicator of the “successful” stories of other Chinese-written encyclopedias such as Baidu and Hudong. Still, mapping Wikipedia with careful attention to its geo-linguistic distribution in the world seems to be a productive beginning.

One of the central idea of my overall concern about diffusion of innovations (which includes technology and political ideas) is how the geo-linguistic factors may help or hinder such diffusion.  Here the post is about Wikipedia and the world.

Note that the success of Wikipedia can be contributed to many decisions or contributions made by individuals from around the globe. My own gut feeling about the major factors for its “global” success:  is It solves some language capacity issues and it allows different governance for each language version of Wikipedia, which I have partially addressed in a published IEEE magazine article: Conflict and consensus in the Chinese version of Wikipedia. How Wikipedia as new idea and new technology has diffused around the globe?

Recently our OII research fellow Mark has just published an article for Guardian, provides interesting evidence on how the efforts and attention of Wikipedia’s geo-tagging is unevenly distributed across countries.  Indeed, for Wikipedia to grow in geo-tagging requires even higher digital literacy, not just contributing to Wikipedias, but aslo contributing well-formatted geo-rich information.

Thus I make both cartograms and choropleth maps to show the geo-linguistic distribution of Wikipedia articles in East Asia and Europe.  Note that only the national (non-colonial) languages that are unique to certain nation-states are included, leaving some countries like Cyprus, Switzerland, and Belgium out, and excluding English in East Asia.  Singapore should have been excluded by the same rule, but since the other official languages of Singapore are represented by other East Asian countries in the map, I decide to include Tamli, one of the official language of Singapore to represent Singapore.

Because the nature of cartogram, one can immediately see the dominance of English in the Wikipedia world.  Still, German, Polish Dutch and other Latin languages have strong showing relatively t their geographical size, with Catalan being represented by a small country Andorra.  In contrast, Russian has relatively small size of Wikipedia articles in comparison with its European geographical territory.

The below choropleth map showing the same data set provides another perspective on the geo-linguistic diffusion of Wikipedia.

Some ex-communist countries like Poland and Russia have relatively high number of Wikipedia articles, sometimes even higher than the Nordic countries where Internet and ICT development is expected to be more extensive. Given the fact that the development of Wikipedia requires higher levels of digital literacy and more advanced skill sets., than just surfing, I tend to hypothesize that, as I found in the case of Chinese Wikipedia, a language version of Wikipedia can take off sometimes even earlier than a more extensive diffusion of Internet and ICT in a geo-linguistic region because of a sizable well-equipped users.

Is this the case for Russian and Polish version of Wikipedias?  Are they written also by Russian and Polish speakers who are not in Russia and Poland?  I will leave the question open a at the moment (probably come back later with the cartogram of Internet users in Europe) and move on to the geo-linguistic distribution/diffusion of Wikipedia in East Asia.

Carbon dioxide emissions serve as sites for all kinds of struggle, and most of them are mediated by the technologies and techniques to measure, show, represent, calculate and map related data.  Cartograms, increasingly popular mapping techniques of showing the size of regions in proportional to other different kinds of datasets, for example, GDP, population, etc., can also be used to show the geographical distribution of Carbon dioxide emissions.

However, it should be noted that the unit of analysis (usually countries) is a very political issue.  Combining two sets of datasets in 2006, I have drawn one cartogram mapping carbon dioxide emissions in East Asia:

East Asia Carbon Emissions Map 2006 (Note: missing data for Tibet)

The territories for each administrative regions are adjusted in proportion to carbon dioxide emissions.
Datasets: EIA (2009) for Asian countries and Jiansheng Qu, et. al (2008) for Chinese province-level regions.
EIA (2009): http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/
Jiansheng Qu, et. al (2008) 曲建升、王琴、曾静静、张志强等，科学研究动态监测快报-气候变化科学专辑，2008年第12期

The above cartogram can be contrasted with a global map, done by the SASI Research Group at University of Sheffield, which also uses the similar cartogram techniques.   However, despite the fact that the overall proportional areas for each countries are similar in both maps, it should be obvious that the western part of China, including Xinjiang Uygur (Xinjiang) and Tibet (Xiang) are much smaller in my cartogram then the SASI’s global one. The global map seems to misrepresent the contribution of western China since it is assumed to be even within the border of China. An improved global map may in the future include the sub-regions or provinces of Russia, Canada, US, Australia, India and of course China.

It is then easy to conclude that the coastal areas of China contribute to the bulk of carbon dioxide emissions with prominent contributing cases like Shandong.  Readers should be aware that the Chinese data source (Qu et. al, 2008) for the year of 2006 does not include Tibet.   Among very few things that the Chinese authorities in Beijing agrees with Dalai Lama is that Tibet suffers the most impact from global warming.   (They differ in related geo-political strategies, though.)

The unit of analysis matters for mapping carbon dioxide emissions, and it should matter for calculating, measuring and thus governing the issue.   It might be unthinkable for cartographers to combine all European nations, which have diverse country profiles, into one block.  However, it is very common for cartographers (and also social scientists) to combine all Chinese provinces for analysis, without recognizing the fact that the economy size of a Chinese province like Guangdong is as large as Sweden.   The implications of this reflection on unit of analysis is enormous.   The unit of analysis is already bounded with administrative and political boundaries, which should be taken into consideration both for research and governance.

Thus, I offer this map to point a road from Copenhagen to Tibet.  My own assessment for success is whether the environment in Tibet can be saved, not just for Tibet or China, but for various Asian countries that are dependent on the this vital region for water and ecological sustainability. It is important to show Tibet by not showing the Tibet in the East Asia Carbon Emissions Map 2006 above.   The data is not available for Tibet, which may suggest that the measuring efforts in China has not formally extended to Tibet. 

It reminds me of another missing category in Chinese data: military.   It is well-known that the population data in China usually does not include military, which on the other hand has sizable presence in Tibet.  Though I am not sure how military activities contribute to carbon dioxide emissions except for logistic ones, it should be pointed out that Dalai Lama propose demilitarization of Tibet for a long time.

Let the global journey to understand global warming begin from Copenhagen to Tibet.

When the remixing free culture movement (e.g. Wikipedia and Linux) contributes to the Internet culture, the Shanzhai culture (e.g. Chinese knockoff and pirated brands and goods) could also be found in the latest the “Green Dam- Youth Escort” software. Judging from the results re-engineered by some tech-savvy users in China, what is inside the “Green Dam- Youth Escort” software contains elements that will surprise many of us.

It is difficult to imagine why any black list can contain the following websites in the same category (see the source):

• americangirl.com
• news.cybersiter.com
• virgin-boys
• amnesty.org

It is the ultimate remix of a lifestyle brand for young American girls, a well-known child-protection filtering software company, a taboo word for child pornography, and …. a pro-human rights international NGO.

Thus, the hackers who re-engineered this software speculates that it is a black list for the Green Dam software.   It is ironic that this software actually contains traces of Cybersitter’s work.  The potential copyright/copyleft infringement could also be found in its using of one open source project, OpenCV.   Please see the section of copyright infringement in the collaboratively-written report.

Hence, the “Green Dam- Youth Escort” software is the ultimate technical, political and legal art form that remixes Beijing’s  patrimonial, paranoia, control-freak political sentiments with Chinese local software industry’s “Shanzhai” style of creativity.   It is sometimes hard to distinguish the two from this software.   The combination is, as the Internet users in China who re-engineered it, absurd and funny!

Taiwanese media (arguably the most liberal in East Asia with regards to gay and lesbian culture) has already criticized the software also filters proper gay and lesbian websites, which is also substantiated by the  re-engineered evidence of gay/lesbian list.  The re-engineers are reluctant to comment, saying they have little clues to comment.   I am sure that human rights group in Taiwan will like to collaborate.  If so, another kind of remix culture will be formed through this process to counter the the “Green Dam- Youth Escort” software, which symbolizes an absurd kind of remix culture: Beijing’s political control freak and Beijing’s indigenuos Shangzhai-based software industry.

Still, there is one re-engineered list of urls that is open to interpretation.  The list contains financial and market information providers.  It is believed to be part of the black list of the “Green Dam- Youth Escort” software.  So, what is your take in why Beijing want to filter such information for the youth in China?

• Is it the ultimate war between the Chinese Green Dam against American Greenbacks?
• Is it the Green Dam built to fend off the financial crisis originated in US?
• Is it to difficult for the Youth in China to understand the financial figures and reports?
• Is the current financial figures and reports too “obscene” for care-free children?
• Is it to prevent the parents to access the financial transparency practice in the West?

Note that www.sec.gov is included in the list.

It has been more than one and half year (17 months) since I formally started my DPhil project.  My research concern has not been changed but the analytic tools (including concepts and methods) have been shifted a bit.  The concerns on nationalism is clearly pushed a little bit into the background, and the concerns on Internet governance on cultural, political (and thus historical) content in Chinese-written Internet should be much more tangible and clear.  Simply put, I may tend to believe at this moment that the indepedent variable is governance rather than nationalism.  Or it is just because I start more from the empirical evidence that can be collected and analyzed on the case of Chinese-written encyclopedia and less on the theoretical debate on the nature of China’s nationalism online, which is too entrenched in the politics and international relationship literatre.

I thus mark this mental milestone by changing the short biography of myself, and leaving the old biography as below:

Continue reading ‘A (mental) milestone for my PhD project’

Much as I appreciate and support the pragmatic approach of “digital-era governance” (DEG), I still find something still missing there about the Internet.  I have found it lately.  It is the re-enchantment part of the Internet, that is to say, the potential to exert magical influence over the people, especially emotionally.

Indeed, internet techonologies can be instrumental, rationalised, and thus blasé.  However, it can also be spontaneous, emotional and imaginative.  It is exactly the “Pied Piper of Hamelin” part of the internet I want to explore here.

It is exactly two very emotionally powerful Internet events that drive me to write this essay.  One is the viral video “Where the Hell is Matt?” and another is the recent speech “Always on the side of the egg” (Chinese translation here) by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami (村上春樹).

First of all, the re-enchantment in Internet could be lies or fictions.  Murakami has pointed out truth could be very elusive, and it is exactly why “making up good lies” is so important for us to discern “where the truth-lies within us”:

In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth-lies within us, within ourselves. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

I guess anyone in the beginning of a relationship will tell you the similar thing   The similar thing could also be applied to religious belief or the “Pied Piper of Hamelin“.  They all could be regarded as lies and fictions that are emotionally powerful and persuasive.  They may not stand up to the scrutiny of rationality and seriousness.  But somehow they have the quality to enchant people.

Now, should we blame people for being so gullible and not rational enough?  Sometimes we should, but sometimes we should not.  For the former we have the improved rationality of “digital-era governance” (DEG), which is outside the discussion of this short essay.  For the latter we have this strange viral video “Where the Hell is Matt?”, which shows the enchantment potentials of online activities.

“Matt”, known as Dancing Matt, features in almost every scene of the video showing him dancing in major landmarks and street scenes around the world.  In the video, his dancing skill is consistently limited, but his passion is not bounded by geography.  Sometimes he dances alone, but increasingly some dog, some go-go-bar girl, and later flocks of people come to dance with him, mostly in public space.

Dancing has been professionalized, privatized, commercialized in our lives for so long.  The ancient dance of communities seem to be lost.  Thus, the spontaneity of the people joining in seems enchanting, as perhaps inherited from our ancestors’ dancing around the fire.  Of course such spontaneous dancing has been also commercialized for commercials.  Still somehow people still want to be enchanted.  (The similar thing could be said about love.)

Somehow, the Dancing Matt video has enchanted so many of the people online.  With my literary analytic skills, I can argue that it is because of the background music, the simple universal joy from so many places of the world, the globalized ideal (cosmopolitanism) that humanity can transcend all kinds of differences, and all these little tricks that makes people tick.  They could be read as powerfully manipulative.

That is why it is hailed as “a near-perfect piece of Internet art“.  It is also a hoax.

People then have two choices in front of them.  Either they have to admitted that they are fooled and deceived in believing such kind of things can actually happen.  Thus they become disillusioned, disenchanted and blasé.  Or they can deconstruct the fake part and claim that “they knew it” in the beginning.

Any other way to see this piece of hoax?

It might be a good idea to understand how such a form of trickery, and stop to become a sucker again.  Or better yet, it might be executable idea to practice it to make other people a bunch of suckers.

That’s all?  I want to push it a bit further, with the below quote by the video maker:

The world is far more dangerous, cruel and unfriendly for something like that to happen.  (But) people bought it.

My question will be, to what extent, Internet is far less dangerous, cruel and unfriendly for something like to happen?  To what extent, people want to buy it so desperately?  To what extent, people are willing to take the risk of being deceived (and thus hurt) to believe again?  To what extent, people want to believe?

Is it exactly this kind of assumed “good faith” that allures so many people into strangers in some chat room, on some talk page of a Wikipedia entry?  Is it exactly people’s hidden desire to meet nice strangers that initiates many unexpected stories online that never happen offline?  Is it the imagination that people want to find a place that is less dangerous, cruel and unfriendly?  Is it why people may have sympathy for the eggs when they are destined to be broke against the wall?

As the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami will probably tell you in the speech, it is not about the rationality that may stop people from lying or becoming the victims of deception, but rather the empathy in siding “on the side the egg” against the solid hard wall of the “system”, even when knowing that the fragile belief in humanity may be easily destroyed by the system we create.

Internet can host many activities of deception.  Of course, we may need improved rationality such as “digital-era governance” (DEG) to stop lying politicians, financial criminals, untrustworthy sellers, manipulative ex-boyfriends, etc to deceive us.   At the same time, we also need desperately some kind of irrational belief, sometimes siding “on the side the egg“, sometimes simply just dancing after watching the video “Where the Hell is Matt?”  It is exactly why the video maker asks the audience to dance with him in a speech.  It is why the audience, though understanding the fact that the video is a hoax, chooses to dance along.  It is the Internet’s potential to change.  It is our common desire to believe (or believe again if one is blasé of the reality out there).

按：　此文原為在zh.wikipedia(中文維基討論區)的討論文章，因最近英國過濾某一維基百科網頁, 而非封鎖整個維基百科網站的相關新聞，重貼於此。

Continue reading ‘中文維基、長城、網際網路論壇(Internet Governance Forum)、及 網際網路權利法案 (The Internet Bill of Rights)’