A screenshot of microblogging website Fanfou on my computer.
Please note the search for “microblogging,” the open tabs on websites Youku and Douban, and, in the lower left, the notice from my VPN service saying it cannot connect.
Last week CBC Radio’s program Spark featured an interview with Columbia University law professor Tim Wu discussing his new book The Master Switch. The book examines the rise and fall of information empires in radio, Hollywood and, most recently, the internet. Wu argues that what has happened historically with information empires is that after they pass through an early Golden Age they become more and more monopolized, and if this cycle continues we will see the dominance of fewer and fewer companies on the web.
The take over of particular spheres of the internet certainly seems to be happening today. We use Facebook for social networking, Twitter for microblogging, Youtube for online videos, and so forth. However, in China different local monopolies have developed.
Wu’s discussion of the internet in general deals with the issue of growing global monopolies, however elsewhere in an article for Slate.com his take on internet use in China only focuses on the over emphasized, and fairly limited, debate on the censorship of information related to democracy and other “sensitive issues.”
If we look at China’s internet censorship in relation to global monopolies rather than censorship only as censorship, we can come to different conclusions. I do not want to suggest censorship of internet in China is a positive tool in general, rather that the results of it are more complicated than often suggested.
