TED Talk: "Let's Take Back the Internet"

This is a thought provoking talk from TED given by Rebecca MacKinnon. Who is she? Here's some info from her TED.com Profile page: "A former head of CNN’s Beijing and Tokyo bureaus, MacKinnon is an expert on Chinese Internet censorship. She’s one of the founders (with Ethan Zuckerman) of the Global Voices Online blog network, which aggregates and translates news around the world that might otherwise go unheard."

The talk is a world trip around censorship and "citizens rights to communication". The world map of social networks shown is interesting when compared with a conventional world map. The talk makes you think about how the internet will evolve and what the next step may be.

What is Communication and how do we define it?

This week's lecture took us on an interesting journey through the history of communication technology. It also kicked off a journey in myself of starting to look at things in a different way. For example, I had always tagged cave paintings as Art and to now see them as a form of communication has put them in a different setting.

I suppose this in itself is showing the dynamic process of communication. We were introduced to Aristotle's theory from his work "Rhetoric" [Speaker-Message-Audience]. So the Lecturer had a message to impart to the students and, in my case, it changed my viewpoint. This is where the "intersubjectivity" comes in as the message was obviously received my unique set of subjective experiences, whereas others may have already thought of cave paintings as communication rather than art. So this had the biggest impact: all the things that can get in the way of the message being received by the receiver i.e. the quality of the message, whether it's clear enough to be heard, the ideas and attitudes of the receiver and their own interpretation. It makes you think about advertising/public relations campaigns and how they try to control a certain message and spending huge amounts of money to do so.

It was also fascinating to learn that writing is the evolution of sound. I had never made that connection before. It brought in the history of a certain form of communication and how, over time, we build upon each layer of knowledge and discovery. From hieroglyphics to Twitter!

(Note: There's a different username with this post as I changed my primary email)

Setting Up the Blog

Being a Techno Phobe, it was an interesting experience to set up the blog in the tutorial.  It felt as if a huge balloon was inflating in my chest and was knotted at the level of my throat so I couldn't swallow.  The famous poster "Keep Calm and Carry On" came to mind when I felt anything but.  Also flashing in was the scene from the film "Julie & Julia" when Julie set up her blog.  Then the fun part - I found a font called Cherry Cream Soda - I had to use it for the delicious name alone and you see it in the title.

So, here's my blog!  Hello World!  Panic over!