3 posts and columns on Tiananmen Square

"Inane and Half-Baked" Twitter Is the Forrest Gump of International Relations

in News on June 16, 2009 at 4:30 am PT

In what is quite possibly the most spot-on comment about Twitter that BoomTown has heard thus far, Harvard University Professor Jonathan Zittrain said about its use by Iranians protesting the election results there: “It is easy for Twitter feeds to be echoed everywhere else in the world. The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what make it so powerful.” In other words, Twitter is so simplistic and silly that it is a perfect digital tool to overthrow a government–which kind of makes the trendy microblogging service the Forrest Gump of international relations.
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Voices

Social Networking Returns to China

in News on June 9, 2009 at 12:35 pm PT

Yesterday, while China Web watchers were digesting the latest bit of news on the requirement that PCs sold in China include government-mandated Internet filtering software, the Web as we knew it a week ago quietly returned.

Millions of Chinese Twitter Users Suddenly Unaware That I Dislike Ramen

in News on June 2, 2009 at 10:19 am PT

If China wants to correct the “false impression” that it fears the Internet, ending its repressive and paranoid blocking of Web services would be a good place to start. This morning Beijing extended the Great Firewall of China, restricting Internet access to Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail and Bing, among others.
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