On the internet everyone knows I’m not a dog

Some thoughts on 114a and the online campaign to stop it. 

There are a couple issues that I think have been overlooked by the government and the movement against it. 

1. The issue is in some ways trivial because ultimately this is about how we choose to present ourselves in virtual space. The evidence act, regardless of how it is worded, does not pay any heed to the core idea of online representation. My argument is that an individual ought to have the right to package herself as she sees fit, anonymously even. Granted, this poses some problems when abused, but its neither a technological nor a legislative issue. It is simply a psychological matter, and its at the very core of what defines us as humans. We should not be expected to be less human on the internet. And it is, in my opinion, beyond the scope of government.

2. The person I am at home is different from the person I choose to be in the company of strangers. It is a survival trait that defines our very being - to portray the most ideal character in a given environment to exploit the opportunities at that particular moment. We are chameleons, whether we realise it or not. And it should be no different on the internet. 

3. 114a appears to try and address this by being able to point to a particular individual as being the one responsible for a certain comment posted online. Given the complexities, it is easy to understand why the onus ought to fall on the person who owns the platform. I do think there is a case for shifting the burden on publishers, which is no different from how it is practiced offline (newspapers, magazines etc). However, participatory platforms like online forums can’t possibly accept the burden due to its open nature. 

4. We need to understand the argument about the internet being a democratic space. The idea of democracy was not so much about our ability to share information. It was about our ability to present ourselves as different sets of information as required. We gave up that democratic right as soon as we chose to make ourselves identifiable and quantifiable on Facebook and Twitter. And it is for that reason that the government now knows I am indeed not a dog and hence are encouraged to sniff me out if I behave badly. 

Cartoon by Peter Steiner 

“remaining vague on demands can make the tent bigger”

on Washington Post: Ezra Klein interviews David Graeber, one of the initial organisers of the Occupy Wall Street protests. 

If you make demands, you’re saying, in a way, that you’re asking the people in power and the existing institutions to do something different. And one reason people have been hesitant to do that is they see these institutions as the problem.

Can’t help drawing comparisons to Bersih 2.0. A cause that should have been inclusive only further divided us due to 8 ill-conceived demands. 

What is the value of free and fair elections?

What is the value of free and fair elections?

To form a legitimate government informed by the will of the people, of course. That, at least, is the textbook answer.

Except that the will of the people is never really served via elections, be it free and fair or otherwise.  Elections merely provide a mandate for a particular political organization to administer a country’s affairs. How they manage that mandate is largely beyond the control of the people. What the democratic system does is merely provide a window of opportunity for the people to overturn that mandate at regular intervals, which is when you will hear demands for a free and fair election once again.

Are free and fair elections really the answer to all that ails us as a nation?

To quote Zaid Ibrahim: “Democracy only works if people use their heads, and not their hearts”. I think this country’s tragedy is that we have become a mass of adrenaline-rushed hearts, with very little head to match. Opportunists and conservatives crave for such a climate to wield their influence on the people.  The outcome of a free and fair election will be neither free nor fair when people cast their votes solely based on emotion and perception. 

Ibrahim Ali is not just an individual. Ibrahim Ali is a state of mind, one fueled by exploiting the emotions of a sizable Malay-conservative demography. This state of mind exists because civil society has failed to provide an alternative liberal approach to Malay supremacy.  

The individual that is Ibrahim Ali is possibly the smartest Malay politician in this country. He understands the democratic process and knows how to exploit it. He pushes all the right buttons. Arrest him for sedition? Should you fault the messenger - how hypocritical and dangerously familiar of us civilized people to shoot the messenger - or question the worrisome “Why are there hundreds and thousands of willing listeners in the first place?”  

Ibrahim Ali is the manifestation of our failure. We created him. And our answer to our sins? To march to demand for free and fair elections. Are we really that naïve? This has to be the laziest, most unimaginative and ill-conceived response to the matter, and serves only to play right into the hands of Perkasa.

Is there no attempt form liberal Malays to define what Malay supremacy is in the context of building compassionate, competitive, and incorruptible individuals? Has there been no attempt by liberal Malays to start an NGO with the purpose of rallying young Malays to the proper ideals of nation building and framing their success in a globalised world that gives little attention to one’s race?

So while we take the easy option and walk a few miles, Ibrahim Ali is hard at work building a robust network that defines Malay supremacy in a conservative framework. Are you sure you really want free and fair elections? Are you prepared for the possible outcome, given that free and fair elections also provide greater freedom for the propagation of the state of mind that is Ibrahim Ali?

What, really, are you marching for? 

email correspondence

the recipient shall remain anonymous. takeaway whatever you can.. just a short rant

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multiculturalism - exactly my point, culture has always been framed from a race point of view. even the progression to monoculturalism is also from the view of assimilating various races. my point is as long as our definition of race is viewed within that narrow bracket we wont be able to develop a malaysian culture for global export (like as though our race is going to get us there. nothing to sell besides being exotic, which is vulgar in its own way). we need to redefine culture as a society with inherent entrepreneurial, intellectual and creative pursuits. 


popteevee - ya la, as u say, nothing i dont already know, nice to get reminded every once in a while. its always been an experiment for me, to just create the platform and let others run wild and build something of value on top of it. its possible that as much as we like to be the catalyst for smart ones, that ultimately we are nothing but a nation of turkeys waiting to be lead? this has been frustrating me for the longest time, and tho its just a small outfit i do worry that it is reflective of our psychological ‘culture’ of not being able to seize on opportunities and go further than can be imagined. comparison is not the most christian thing to do (not that I am a christian) but if we have to, the fact remains that in the west, entrepreneurship is so well ingrained in their culture that from the littlest of help they can build mountains. here, I can safely say within the group of ours we have some the of smartest brightest malaysians. and as much as we criticise how some sectors of society are nothing more than reliant on handouts, we fail to see that we ourselves are trapped within that same framework. we are marginally better, but cant get the margins to add up to something really significant. lots of blind spots. the ep with the tanya najib segment for example could have simply been cut as a shorter tanya najib exclusive and put up on facebook as a separate video to fool people into thinking it was actually the real one that everyone was talking about. would have raked up huge followers. i dont know, maybe need some ass kicking, but as you know, my role has always been merely to provide the platform. not sure if i want to run it as it should be. maybe ive just been believing (wrongly) that we do have people who can see smallest of opportunities to mass into something larger. so maybe ive been wrong all along. we are smart, but not quite smart enough. 


fuck
;p

Idris Jala

Read this. 

Maybe being exposed to the cabinet for extended periods has the reverse effect on one’s IQ. 

People do business with the Japanese and Koreans despite the language barrier because of the value of what they have to offer. Culturally they are far more advanced than us. They reverse engineered key technologies and created far superior products than the west. Cheaper too at one point, so much so that people were desperate to do business with them. The entire cycle is repeating itself for us to witness first hand. Just look at China. 

Huawei was founded in 1988. Within 10 years they entered a strategic partnership with IBM, and soon after a joint venture with Siemens. Today they are the second biggest telecoms infrastructure provider behind Ericsson. Look up their entry on Wikipedia and you’ll see allegations of technology theft. Call it what you will but they learnt hard and fast and made full use of their low-cost advantage. Now everyone has to do business with them. Its no longer an option but a necessity if you run a Telco and want to remain cost effective. In just two decades, Huawei is now at the cutting-edge of next-gen mobile technologies. They have successfully moved from copycats to innovators. 

How long has Proton been in business by the way?

At this point we can only hope that because we are fairly proficient in English, people will still choose to do business with us compared to the other countries in the region. But that is different from people wanting to do business with us despite the language barrier. 

the music industry wants to govern your internets

I’ve been meaning to blog on this for some time now. Introduction of ISP law in Malaysia? The music industry is missing the point again (yawn..) and I have to question the wisdom of their leadership. The best way to fight piracy is to find a way of benefitting from the velocity of music online.

It’s vital to our economy that we bump up internet penetration. ISP’s need new customers to keep their traffic flowing (there is a counter argument to this; on how ISP’s benefit from piracy online and thus owe their entire business model to the music industry).

Similar laws passed in other countries haven’t been all too successful either, and ISP’s have more issues to deal with than playing cop for an industry that continuously resists innovation and the opportunity to reinvent itself. RIM should be focusing on re-educating its members on the digital economy rather than trying to protect its legacy business models. And if it fails, then just like any other legacy model, it shold be allowed to die so that a new model can be built in its place. Its purely about economics.

What I’m not certain is whether or not the local music industry has the kind of thought leaders needed to reinvent itself. That is the problem, not consumer behavior.

newswire 2.0

i wrote the following as an ed note for Buletin Popek.

The blogosphere is an interesting space. Those who refer to it as an alternative to mainstream media are missing the point. We are a generation rethinking information networks, creating what in a few generations will be mainstream media, itself exposed to its own challenges and limitations, only to be rethought again and again and again… The redeeming factor is that we are collectively advancing society by ensuring that information finds more efficient ways of doing what it does best…. spread.

PopTeeVee will be one year old in June. Our belief that ‘information needs to be free, information wants to be free’, feels much stronger and relevant today than when we first thought it up almost a year ago. So much information lives within the blogosphere, and while it is free for the most part (ever heard of a subscription based blog?) - fulfilling the first part of the equation - the sheer volume of information out there (a lot of it rubbish too, we should add) is daunting. It can’t be so free if one has to work so hard to find it.

Thinking about it further, we start to see that the blogosphere is really a form of crowd-sourced news-wire. What’s really going for it is that there is more journalism happening on blogs than in news rooms. If it is indeed a news wire of sorts, why aren’t newsrooms accessing the wealth of journalism it generates?

And so we have Buletin Popek, an idea still in development. It’s about finding the best bits of relevant news items on the BlogWire and creating a weekly (eventually to be daily) news program of the internets, by the internets, for the internets.

We welcome any feedback (please add to the comments section below) and hope to crowdsource the production of Buletin Popek. Scouring blogs, creating copy, voicing the puppets (yes, more to come) are just some of the roles that can be crowdsourced.

Thanks for joining us on the journey so far.

Here’s to One Malaysia, wherever you are.

hype machine redux

a couple weeks back i posted this on my facebok thought stream

Hardesh Singh Proton should concentrate on developing low-cost electric vehicles for the masses. Why do we keep missing opportunities?? http://tinyurl.com/b7drdb

About the same time, this story developed linking Proton with Detroit Electric. The name rang a bell, I checked my delicious tags and was lead back to a feature Wired ran back in Mar ‘08. Read about Zap Corporation and the apparent scam in developing low-cost electric vehicles for the North American market. Detroit Electric and Albert Lam, both connected to the Proton deal, are mentioned in the article. specifically on page 7.

Will Proton be the next Hype Machine?

R.A.H.M.A.N

Rahman

Abdul Razak

Hussein Onn

Mahathir

Abdullah

Nizar

….there is still hope.

* yes, i know it’s Mohammad Nizar. There may be one aspect to this prophecy overlooked thus far.  It was after all Abdul Rahman.