Yesterday night, we finished watching all 4 episodes of the PBS show entitled "China from the Inside." It was an emotional ride; I was sad, mad, disappointed and hopeful.
I was especially disturbed by the environmental disasters - the polluted water, air, soil - prevalent in China; these are also the basic elements for sustaining human life, be you rich or poor. The images in the show are heart-wrenching. A village, now known as the "cancer village", has many sickly people lacking basic medical care and having no way of getting compensated for what have caused their cancer - deadly cancer-inducing pollutants in the river where they draw their drinking water. That makes me wonder, not for the first time, that the polluted water and air probably are the key culprits for my mother's cancer too. Obviously, she is not alone in this case. It pains me. It angers me.
On a positive note, the program interviewed activists, journalists and professors who are deeply concerned about these issues and passionate about making changes. I truly admire their courage, altruism and perseverance for taking real actions: exposing scandals, cleaning up rivers, planting trees, spreading "green" messages. Someday, I hope I have the guts to face the perils and contribute my share to make China a greener and cleaner place.
I took a stroll to PBS's forum on this show. There are insightful discussions on different subjects - assigning blames, searching for solutions, debating on the fate of Tibet, the future of China - all good food for thought.
I hope the Chinese in China will get to see this documentary too...
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Blog for U, or for Myself? - That Is A Question!
Today, I ran across an article that caught my attention, because it used the phenomenon of mass blogging as a main example to support the argument. After reading it, I felt compelled to point out a fallacy.
Below is an excerpt from the article entitled "Economics of Here to There" by Jefferey Tucker, in which, he used 'blogging' as a primary example to illustrate his point:
"Thanks to the advent of mass blogging, many more people are acquainted with this issue than ever before. Let's say you take what is for most people a big and exciting step of creating a blog. There are so many sites now that make it easy. You sign up, you fiddle around with the look and feel, you add links, and the all-important "about me" page. You are ready to go.
You write your first post, thoughts you find funny, profound, insightful, or otherwise compelling in some way. Submit. And voila! You are published in a medium that is accessible to the entire world. Who can believe it?
The thrill doesn't last long because you suddenly realize something that had not yet presented itself. Only your family is reading this. Maybe. It's true that anyone in the world can access it but why should anyone want to? How are people even going to find out about it? How can you be sure that people are going to come back again and again?
This is a striking problem mainly because it is something that hadn't actually occurred to you before. You created a beautiful product. You could create a profound post. But you must then persuade people to read it.
You might have read somewhere that the key to blogging is to do it often. So you blog and blog. You post 3 times, or even ten times, per day. You keep this up for weeks, even months. Exhausted, you check your stats. They show no increase in readership. Still, only your family is reading — or at least they claim to be reading.
You then turn to other means. You link, you beg for links, you turn on track backs. You try boosting your search-engine ranking. Finally, you take the step: you buy a spot on Google ads. Then things begin to happen. And then you marvel at how much time you have spent on this project. It seems that you have spent 10 times as much time promoting than you ever spent writing your blog. And yet what is the point of writing if you have no readers?
In this way, average people are beginning to see the great hidden cost of capitalist production: getting from here to there. And take note that with blogging, the problem of distribution is already solved. The final product is delivered via a click."
The author is trying to make a point about how the cost of promoting and marketing a product is far greater than the cost of actually producing it - a point that's well argued and I don't disagree - except that I don't think "blogging" is a good example.
Is the content of blogging a product? It varies from case to case - some blog sites are, some are not. I don't think there is a consensus out there among bloggers. The author's assumption that blogging is a business activity that churns about products does NOT fly, and is misleading. Blogging can't be equated to selling things on ebay. It's not necessarily a commercial activity; in fact, it's probably more spiritual - searching for a virtual community and sharing fun stories with friends & family members - than commercial.
I started blogging, because I like what I can do with it. Surely, I could also keep a journal on my own computer in MS Word. But I wouldn't be able to have access to it whenever I want. I blog, first and foremost, for myself. If there is no traffic on my site at all, I won't be disappointed or discouraged to continue with my random babbling.
The reasons that I prefer blogging over the traditional way of keeping a journal:
1. It looks prettier than a plain word document stored away on my computer.
2. I tend to be more disciplined (spelling, punctuation and grammar) and, occasionally, more creative when I know there might be a pair of invisible eyes glancing through. And, for the same reason, I don't blog about things of utmost private nature.
3. I like the idea that other people can access it and comment on it if they choose too. If not, I'm equally jovial - because I treat it as a hobby.
4. I can access it whenever I want - on my couch or in an Internet cafe far away from home.
5. It's a place where I can store my favorite links without having to pull down the "bookmark" function on my web browser.
6. Ultimately, it creates a space that's controllable, accessible and interactive.
Below is an excerpt from the article entitled "Economics of Here to There" by Jefferey Tucker, in which, he used 'blogging' as a primary example to illustrate his point:
"Thanks to the advent of mass blogging, many more people are acquainted with this issue than ever before. Let's say you take what is for most people a big and exciting step of creating a blog. There are so many sites now that make it easy. You sign up, you fiddle around with the look and feel, you add links, and the all-important "about me" page. You are ready to go.
You write your first post, thoughts you find funny, profound, insightful, or otherwise compelling in some way. Submit. And voila! You are published in a medium that is accessible to the entire world. Who can believe it?
The thrill doesn't last long because you suddenly realize something that had not yet presented itself. Only your family is reading this. Maybe. It's true that anyone in the world can access it but why should anyone want to? How are people even going to find out about it? How can you be sure that people are going to come back again and again?
This is a striking problem mainly because it is something that hadn't actually occurred to you before. You created a beautiful product. You could create a profound post. But you must then persuade people to read it.
You might have read somewhere that the key to blogging is to do it often. So you blog and blog. You post 3 times, or even ten times, per day. You keep this up for weeks, even months. Exhausted, you check your stats. They show no increase in readership. Still, only your family is reading — or at least they claim to be reading.
You then turn to other means. You link, you beg for links, you turn on track backs. You try boosting your search-engine ranking. Finally, you take the step: you buy a spot on Google ads. Then things begin to happen. And then you marvel at how much time you have spent on this project. It seems that you have spent 10 times as much time promoting than you ever spent writing your blog. And yet what is the point of writing if you have no readers?
In this way, average people are beginning to see the great hidden cost of capitalist production: getting from here to there. And take note that with blogging, the problem of distribution is already solved. The final product is delivered via a click."
The author is trying to make a point about how the cost of promoting and marketing a product is far greater than the cost of actually producing it - a point that's well argued and I don't disagree - except that I don't think "blogging" is a good example.
Is the content of blogging a product? It varies from case to case - some blog sites are, some are not. I don't think there is a consensus out there among bloggers. The author's assumption that blogging is a business activity that churns about products does NOT fly, and is misleading. Blogging can't be equated to selling things on ebay. It's not necessarily a commercial activity; in fact, it's probably more spiritual - searching for a virtual community and sharing fun stories with friends & family members - than commercial.
I started blogging, because I like what I can do with it. Surely, I could also keep a journal on my own computer in MS Word. But I wouldn't be able to have access to it whenever I want. I blog, first and foremost, for myself. If there is no traffic on my site at all, I won't be disappointed or discouraged to continue with my random babbling.
The reasons that I prefer blogging over the traditional way of keeping a journal:
1. It looks prettier than a plain word document stored away on my computer.
2. I tend to be more disciplined (spelling, punctuation and grammar) and, occasionally, more creative when I know there might be a pair of invisible eyes glancing through. And, for the same reason, I don't blog about things of utmost private nature.
3. I like the idea that other people can access it and comment on it if they choose too. If not, I'm equally jovial - because I treat it as a hobby.
4. I can access it whenever I want - on my couch or in an Internet cafe far away from home.
5. It's a place where I can store my favorite links without having to pull down the "bookmark" function on my web browser.
6. Ultimately, it creates a space that's controllable, accessible and interactive.
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