Thursday, November 26, 2009

Google Waves of Grief

I recently received my invite to Google Wave and am finding it quite interesting. I have always considered myself an early adopter of new technologies and this is quite an interesting one. However, I continue to be troubled by the lengths to which companies such as Google will go to secure market share in China. Their willingness to censor links is deplorable and it is really difficult to understand how they could find such moves ethical.

The possibilities for international collaboration made possible through Google Wave simply highlights how contradictory censoring the internet for Chinese consumption is. What steps has and will Google take to censor users from China using Google Wave? At what point will Google and other companies like it realize that there is no market share worth fundamentally undermining the human rights of others? It is hard to imagine how these decisions were made, or how those who made them can continue to pretend they are doing no harm.

If silence is consent, then censoring under the direction of a totalitarian state is collusion. History never judges such treason lightly.

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