Watching the Inauguration from China
Piggybacking on Ben’s post about how the Obama administration may change information technology policy, I had a revelation yesterday of just how strong an impact new technology has had on my political involvement and engagement in the past year. For one, I have made several comments on political blogs, especially those dealing with China issues, and I’ve even wrote to website administers to take down comments that I thought were highly offensive. During the Tibet turmoil last Spring, I even sent a few strongly worded facebook messages to Chinese friends from Dickinson who I thought were extremely out of line in attacking the United States when their freedom to do so was something they took for granted. I’ve never really given voice to my political opinions before, but now its something that comes naturally in the age of twitter and blog comment sections.
Also I wouldn’t have been able to watch (listen rather) to the inauguration speech without new technology. Of course CCTV didn’t give a rat’s ass about the incoming president and didn’t have a single station even partially covering the inauguration. We thought that CCTV9 would at least show the speech, but no, the only thing on was a report on “When will Obama close Guantanamo?” Not having cable, HBO, or any premium channels, nor having internet that was fast enough for live streaming, Andy, I and the girls came up with a bootleg solution: listen to NPR’s full coverage online (which occurred in real time) while watching halting clips from CNN’s live streaming (muted of course) by connecting my lap top to the big screen. The video of course froze every five seconds and then re-buffered, but at least we got to see what Michelle Obama was wearing (so important).
All in all, I have to admit that I wouldn’t be as politically involved, especially in light of the fact that I live in a communist country that doesn’t condone the democratic process, without the use of new technology such as blogging, twitter and social networking sites.
It’s true these things make a difference!
