Censorship: A form of dictatorship of information
Posted on April 15, 2010 - Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
In March 2010, Google (one of the biggest search engine) pullout from China due to the Chinese goverment‘s decision to censor the internet service (see link). Many debates and forums had been setup to discuss this issue
The internet (Internet and World Wide Web) entails the beginning of a new era in human evolution. The easy accessibility of information through the internet was first welcome by the authority as a way to improve the lives of human. But, as history suggests, people in authority or governance will become intolerant when the commoners gain more knowledge through the accessibility of information.
Here, the internet becomes one of the platform and delivery medium for e-democracy. Eventually, the traditional bureaucrats who feared the freedom of information and those that like to claim themselves as moral-police will try to censure or block the accessibility of the internet. Hence, some countries becomes the enemy of the internet.
In Malaysia, we are fortunate that our government had not attempt to block or censored the internet. Last year, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and Tun Dr Mahathir had opined the need for the freedom of internet access (reported in this blog)
Unfortunately, we do find over-zealous moral-police and inferiority-complex authorities in organisations and schools putting up firewalls and proxies (some higher than the Great Wall of China) in censoring the access of information by its people.
When Neil Armstrong said That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind, he had to do it in a place devoid of gravity, because in the gravitiy of tyranny and oppression there is no way progress in physical and human mind can do a small step, let alone a giant leap.
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