Can we talk?

The World Wide Web may have connected many people together and made the world a smaller place in the short time it has existed, but it also has the potential to cause division and social upheaval. The web wars are hotting up. At a macro level, we have a nation state taking on one of the giants of the Internet. In the red corner, the People's Republic of China, and in the multicoloured corner, Google. When one of the largest icons of free speech clashes headlong with the largest single totalitarian force on the planet, there is going to be collateral damage. Google says it is pulling out of operations in China, because of its attempts to suppress free speech. So is Google big enough to take on the world's largest nation state?

Daniel Lyons, writing in this week's Newsweek says 'the Internet is bigger than any one country - even a country as big as China. Calling out China as someone who "doesn't get it" is a way of putting the rest of the world on notice. The Chinese people are finding their own ways around the 'Great Firewall of China', sidestepping filters, using proxy servers to gain access to the sites and ideas its government is trying to suppress. China may be big, and its economy one of the most successful worldwide, but it won't win this war.

At the personal level the web war is also causing casualties. In this week's Spectator, Rod Liddle recounts the story of yet another victim of social network indiscretion. This time it's the hapless Paul Chambers who, frustrated with a decision by his local airport to shut down due to the recent snow, made a seemingly innocuous remark on Twitter that he was going to 'blow the airport sky high' if they didn't get their act together. Someone reported it as a terrorist threat. The Police were called in. Chambers was arrested, his laptop, iPhone and home computer confiscated. He has subsequently been banned from flying from any UK airport, and has even been suspended from his job. In his commentary, Liddle asks reasonably whether there is any genuine terrorist who would actually announce his plans over a public channel like Twitter. Liddle condemns the British authorities for over-reacting, for grotesque officiousness, self-righteous posturing and a 'complete and utter lack of common sense and natural justice'. He'll probably be suspended from his job now for stating his opinion. One wonders how far away the UK is from becoming just a little bit like China in its suppression of free speech?

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