Apparently the Congressional committee for Human Rights Abuse is now petitioning a number of tech firms such as Microsoft and Google to appear before a board of inquiry, to find out why they are complying with China in censoring search terms (among other things).
Is this not one of the most bellicose chutzpah’s you’ve ever heard? Where on earth does anyone in Congress (sans Ron Paul) get off at pointing a condemning finger at anyone outside the beltway? It’s not like Congress doesn’t already eavesdrop or prevent certain things from being published. Who voted to invade a country and continues to occupy it? Last time I checked neither Bill Gates nor Eric Schmidt were setting up roadblocks, dropping paratroopers into neighborhoods or hijacking an entire economy.
At the same time, I am not ignoring the fact that it is the Chinese politicos who are also to blame for censoring darn near everything.
Perhaps the People’s Congress should subpoena the sycophants in DC and vice-versa. Then we could find out who has the best form of censorship…
Apparently some geeks over at the Return of Whatever blog put together a podcast a few days ago and they ended up discussing my article on the University (they mention it twice, once at around 10:30 min and again at 23:30 min).
Unfortunately, they didn’t discuss any of the economics or business side of the issue, which was by-in-large, the main thesis of the piece. Instead they debate whether or not a student could realistically create a virtual classroom that could legitimately replace the need to attend a residential institution. One of the guys suggests that it could be done with current technology, or technology in the not-so-distant future. The other, a teacher, argues that there is something intangible that cannot be conveyed or otherwise downloaded through a virtual experience.
My thoughts on their angle: I know an entire generation that is literally self-taught in terms of computer literacy. I didn’t learn to blog because of a course at school. I didn’t learn html, Photoshop or a plethora of other wares from any kind of formal course. In fact, I didn’t learn to type or use the basic features of a GUI from the instruction of a teacher. Nor have my friends or many of my peers.
I say this to suggest that if given the information in the form of lectures, notes, visual aides and the like - a motivated student could arguably learn many subjects as proficiently as someone sitting in a classroom (i.e. the social sciences and liberal arts fit into this category more than others).
And based upon their topical news, the folks at ‘Return of Whatever’ apparently subscribe to the same RSS feeds I do, all 96 of them.
On the plus side, they did mention the almighty Facebook — all hail to thee.
