The Politic wrote:
I ask this question constantly of my students. I teach history at a community college, no big deal, but it shapes me as much as I shape anything... I ask them if they feel information can be controlled. Their answer is hell no.

I don't think so. Repressive regiems certainly try, but they mostly succeed at creating inconvenience rather then absolutely controlling access. The degree to which information can be controlled largely relates to whether people are willing to accept the controls and how much they are willing to learn or risk to spread the information.

At the root of this, I think, is that there is a symbiotic relationship between the control of information and the management of perception. If, for example, you've managed to convince all of the proles in your dictatorship that the western media is corrupt and dishonest, chances are most of them won't have a problem with your blocking of "libelous and misleading" media. The blocking will keep the seeds of certain ideas from being sewn in people who have been culturalized to distrust such sources from the outset, and so it becomes self reenforcing. A systemic willful ignorance. On the other hand, if freedom of speech is enshrined at the root of your culture, any attempt to control it will be immediately distrusted, and you're going to have a hell of a hard time keeping certain kinds of things under wraps without a long term project of conterveilling cultural programming.

RE: Myspace stumbles