google is a country: indeed
February 1st, 2010 by lifeproof
I thought that this topic would have already been saturated in the blogosphere and the social-media-sphere, but in contrary, except for The Huffington Post and The Guardian almost no other outstanding media has issued the subject.
Alan Rusbridger from The Guardian reports:
Google is not a country. Eric Schmidt – who would be prime minister if it was – kept repeating the point at a briefing he gave at Davos this afternoon. They didn’t have a police force, they didn’t have jails, they didn’t have their own prosecutors. Only once did he slip and say : “Nevertheless we have to secure our borders.”
In this regard there are three points that I would like to point out: showing up at Davos. conflict with China. ubiquitous and omnipotent extension.
1. Showing up at Davos.
As Alan Rusbridger points out in his article:
In other respects Google is not unlike many other countries (Britain, say) which turn up at Davos with half the cabinet. Schimdt was flanked by his senior team – including David Drummond, Nikesh Arora, Marissa Mayer, and Chad Hurley. All presidents or vice-presidents, and worth a few billion between them. They are sitting on mountains of cash and no debt. So, not very much like most countries.
Here we see that Google is attending Davos, as if, representing a country. A virtual one: one that expands its border more and more each day. One that has more confidential information of many of the real countries’ citizens than that countries themselves. One that has the power to defy China–while even the USA would not dare to do so. Google is–indeed–a country. One that even George Orwell could not have imagined.
2. Conflict with China.
As I have stressed, Google is the only entity in the whole world that had the guts enough to defy and bully Chinese government. This tells us that Google has become a giant global existence that has more netizens than any other entity in the entire world: imagine what that number could be keeping in mind that facebook has more than 350 million active members, there are 231.510.169 active web-sites, 900.000 new blog posts every 24 hours, 27,3 million tweets per day. Google can not only defy China–but any other country in the world.
3. Ubiquitous and omnipotent extension.
Google has more members than any social club, any tupperware party, let alone any other country–beating up the most crowded country in the world: China which has more than 1.3 billion citizens. And don’t forget that citizenship is not a choice–you are born into it–but netizenship is indeed a personal choice. I know people who believe in Google more than any other religion.
Once you are a part of this expansion, there is no way out. You are in Google forever. And I do not think that there is any strong entity–virtual or real–that is strong and secure enough to avoid getting involved in Googledom.
Here we go back to Rusbridger:
Craig Newmark has eaten the classified market: now Eric Schmidt wants display. That’s all newspapers need. The Google team purred reassurance. They were here to help newspapers, not destroy them. Hmmm.
He quotes in this excerpt from an article at Advertising Age on Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian’s speech at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he says: we are there to help newspapers:
Mr. Varian said he has been studying data on news publishing, ad revenue and circulation figures from the Newspaper Association of America, the Pew Research Center and other sources. His conclusion: Digital distribution will be a boon to newspaper publishers if they can also radically redefine their product and means of reaching consumers.
Therefore, I would claim that Google is indeed a country. And that should be acknowledged as soon as possible. And this claim brings forth the question of the existence of virtual and online entities in the real world. We have been discussing for a long time the future of real companies and their integration into the virtuallandscape. But what about the other way round? Let’s think about it until next time.
Tags: Advertising Age, Alan Rusbridger, Chad Hurley, China, Craig Newmark, David Drummond, Davos, Davos Economic Forum, Eric Schmidt, existence of virtual beings, Google, Google is a country, Google vs. China, Googledom, Hal Varian, Marissa Mayer, Newspaper Association of America, Nikesh Arora, Pew Research Center, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, UC Berkeley, virtual existence, virtual existence of real beings
Posted in Black Yogurt Chronicles | Back to ( ! )
virtual protest march on google maps
January 26th, 2010 by lifeproof
I have written an article on the dispute between Google and China for a Turkish newspaper the last week. I stated that The Great Firewall of China was not much different than the firewall that the Turkish conservative government has built around us. When I first returned to Turkey this summer after spending two years in New York, I have complained at one of my blog posts about the ban on YouTube (and some other websites such as MySpace, Last.fm, etc) in Turkey.
And these bans were defended by the Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan. He even said that he COULD find his way to access YouTube and that he was sure that some people may do that, too. But that was not the issue. It is not if one can find a way to reach the website, the point is that why is it banned at the first place?
The bans are going on for the last few years and they do not seem to be going to end soon. Therefore, a group of activists in Turkey organized a “virtual protest march” against internet censorship of the AKP government.
One of the protesters stated to ReadWriteWeb that:
Thousands of Turkish users gathered on virtual Taksim Square of Istanbul to protest censorship. When prostestors achieve the target number, they will walk to Ankara, pixel by pixel, to the parliament house.
The article goes on and the blogger explains how volunteers can join in the “virtual protest march” on Google maps to support Turkish protesters to generate a publicity as big as possible:
The virtual protest uses Google Docs’ “anyone can edit” function. Each protester is able to edit the document and put her or himself on the map. Our source tells us that since the map can be edited by anyone, “it also becomes a social game, with people moving and editing others’ position.”
It is a great idea to make a march on the internet to protest internet censorship. And it is now in your hands to make it become the biggest “virtual protest march” of history. Come on let’s walk on Istanbul’s most popular street.
Here is your ticket to join in.
Tags: AKP, ban on YouTube, bobiler.org, China, Google, Google Docs, google maps, Istanbul, New York, New York City, ReadWriteWeb, Tayyip Erdogan, The Great Firewall of China, Turkey, virtual protest, virtual protest march, YouTube
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paper toys: milk gone mad!
January 22nd, 2010 by lifeproof
Milk Gallery in Istanbul opened an extraordinary paper toy art exhibition with the collaboration of many contemporary urban artists and designers of Turkey. Milk Gallery’s website introduced the exhibition with below excerpt:
Milk will host first custom toy show in Turkey! The print – cut – build generation is invading the gallery with some of the unique characters made out of paper ! Until now, the approved artists for this experience are;
Internation princess of paper toys ” Dolly Oblong “, Alexander Gwynne, Anıl Tortop, Bengi Gençer, Buğra Bayrak, Burak Şentürk, Çağrı Akyurt, 2mikrop, Derin Çiler ( Mekazoo ), Deniz Beşer, Fatih Yılmaz, Uçman Balaban, Dyadic, Duygu Esentürk, Rüya Ögü, Ece Diçmen, Eric Wirjanata, Esra Arıcı, Gemma Correll, Japi Honoo, Luke Glood, Michael C. Hsiung, Nur Teker, Olcayto Cengiz, Pamela Halomoan, Sadi Tekin, Sernur Işık, Toygun Özdemir, Volkan Saruç, Zeynep Rojda Güvenç, Yusuf Gençer, Nadire Şule Atılgan, Bal İçme, Öykü Akkoyunlu, Yasin Sandık.
We thank Çağrı Akyurt for making the Yubba’s availible for this show.
Among these are friends and family such as: Burak Şentürk. Fatih Yılmaz. Uçman Balaban. Nur Teker. Sadi Tekin.
You can visit the exhibition until February 11.
Here are some of the art work that takes place in the exhibition:
And Rokkas vs. Sukkas [Rokkas is Fatih Yılmaz (seetheworks.com) and Sukkas is Uçman Balaban (fillintheblanks.net)] made a giant skull toy, which was for me the special appearance of the show.
And this is how it was made.
Tags: 2mikrop, Alexander Gwynne, Anıl Tortop, Bal İçme, Bengi Gençer, Buğra Bayrak, Burak Şentürk, Çağrı Akyurt, Deniz Beşer, Derin Çiler, Dolly Oblong, Duygu Esentürk, Dyadic, Ece Diçmen, Eric Wirjanata, Esra Arıcı, Fatih Yilmaz, Gemma Correll, Istanbul, Japi Honoo, Luke Glood, Mekazoo, Michael C. Hsiung, Milk Gallery, Nadire Şule Atılgan, Nur Teker, Olcayto Cengiz, Öykü Akkoyunlu, Pamela Halomoan, paper toy, paper toy show, Rokkas vs. Sukkas, Rüya Ögü, Sadi Tekin, Sernur Işık, Toygun Özdemir, ucman balaban, vimeo, Volkan Saruç, Yasin Sandık, Yubba, Yusuf Gençer, Zeynep Rojda Güvenç
Posted in PinPoint, Reminder | Back to ( ! )
la puerta: stuck in between
January 22nd, 2010 by lifeproof
Let’s have an artistic beginning to the weekend with a video collaboration from Limow (blog) and Sam3 (blog), which has been prepared “during the Fame Festival in Grottaglie and after in Barcelona and Murcia.” If you are familiar with street art then you have probably heard of Limow and Sam3.
We had an interesting art exhibition opening yesterday, too. I will blog its post after this one. But first, here is La Puerta.
Tags: Barcelona, Fame Festival, Grottaglie, La Puerta, Limow, Murcia, Sam3
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