Stopping virtual trading = going back in time

In our worlds, there are a lot of ironies. Ironies are things you have to do yet do not wish to happen. Corruption is one of them.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/blackmoney/view/
This is an interesting video of a tips of an iceberg of the highest level of corruption in the world - amongst princes, prime ministers, presidents, and so forth.

But... we are all corrupted, in one way or the other. In world of warcraft, addon authors were recently banned to solicit donations online. This, in a way, was Blizzard's way to stop money making the virtual world go round. However, I doubt this is a good way forward. For a certain fact that helping our friends around us has been the way humans work for centuries.

(If you did not know about the game nor that post, linked above, you may be lost.)

Say if Blizzard continue the policy despite addon authors' protests, they will root out payments to major addon development, thus enabling players to have 'equal' access to addons. However, how equal is 'equal?' Many addon authors of the most complex mods, such as Group Calendar, NUi, and Carbonite, have announced the privilege to their efforts to be given only to those who they wanted, perhaps that meant their guild mates, friends, families, and maybe their donors. Discounting the smaller number of donors that would now donate to them (via websites), the currency network now contracts into personal network. Monetary capital becomes social capital.

I reckoned that was a stepback for civilization. We used to barter trade, that is face to face, with our neighboring villages. However, with currency, we are able to trade with strangers. Now, with the new rule implemented, we are somewhat transported back into the age of barter trading. World of Warcraft was sent back in time. I wonder that help was there for social equality.

Are you cultured? Reflections of culture on technological usage.

When we talk about culture, we may mean two different things. One, culture as a set of behaviors unique to a particular group of people. We may say Chinese like red colors and are family oriented. Two, culture as in mannerism and pleasantness in face to face meeting. I think that the second type of culture is more relevant to technological usage.

The Internet is now driving a lot of changes in our society. But what driving Internet usage is the culture (the second type). In China's Internet space, we saw a lot of trojans planting, hacking, and government censorship. Chinese Internet groups did not appear to be working well together. More often, they were trying to defeat their competitors using all means possible. Companies also do not readily open their web portal, e.g. forums, to all visiting users. It was common to install a layer of protection such as invitation code for new visitors.

In the US's space, it appears to be more open. And relationship between sites are friendlier, at least, they do not compete beyond developing better products. Site masters appear to be working together well, including developers and their users. These was what I have seen in the World of Warcraft Modding communities.

Perhaps the short 30 years of Chinese's encounters with free market economy caught its culture off-guard. They were not ready for full fledge open collaborations. Nonetheless, following our definitions, we may say then that the US community is more cultured than the Chinese. And that despite having the same technology, Chinese culture requires changes to optimise its use. Moreover, Internet is merely an enabler. What makes people effective is communication.

I am more than convince with Web 2.0 driving the forefront of social development, the future of successful societies lie in development of their culture.

Games = violence? Bah!

Within a few days, I saw computer games being blamed for violence in youth. First was about the cases in Singapore where a student slashed his professor before jumping to his death, and another student hanging himself. Second was about a German youth killing 16 others.

On the first case, Alice Loh said in Facebook, "Alice Loh at 7:23pm March 11

I thk we shld also start looking into the stress our kids have at home. this may includes parenting and society stress...exams...pressure. Restrict Violence Gaming is a MUST !"

On the second case, "The actual problem is violent computer games," says Georg Stiel, president of the club in Volksdorf.

"They mislead young ones, letting them shoot people and animals without being at risk themselves. I would have those games banned."

Shooting clubs, on the other hand, teach respect towards weapons as well as safety rules, gun law, discipline and patience, Mr Stiel says.

"Guns are our sports equipment. Of course they are weapons, but so are golf clubs, tennis rackets and broken bottles," he adds."

(Duh... I wonder if Mr Stiel has a choice, would he like to be hit by a golf club or a gun?)

Why computer games? Because the users are the powerless youths who can be easily lambasted, in comparison with the general adults that watched movies? Isn't TV a more widespread perpetrator of gun and violence? How about our national service (conscription to the army)? We learn how to shoot with a real gun.

My point is violence is violence, just because we could not understand our kids doesn't mean it is due to gaming. Finding a scape goat is to overlook the real issues here. We can eradicate 100 technologies that seemingly inculcated violence, but still not realize why are our kids angry.

China's problems: vested-interest or reform?

I thought this article provided a backdrop for my thesis on the inability of Chinese Internet groups to form productive alliances. The lack of suitable social protocols, was even reinforced by the lack of conditions to make one. An open group would tend to close-up when facing unruly users and scrupulous competitors. Something out-of-sight of our fieldwork seems to be at work, encouraging extreme measures against out-groups. It would be hard to imagine Wowinterface launch vicious hacking attacks on WowAce. However, it was rumored that attacks between sites happened in China. It appeared to be morally acceptable for Chinese groups to cat-fight for supremacy. But in an environment where corruption is a way of life, what other measures would be worse?

Finally, I agreed with with Sun that an environment encouraging short-term vest-interests and seeking stability (twisted form of harmony) leads to nothing but decay.

Quote: "When corruption becomes a way of life, when it becomes something beyond reproach, and when it becomes something everyone denounces and at the same time desires, the whole society has entered a state of maldevelopment."

Reflections of China's Creativity

“There are too many people in China,” said almost everyone I met. Whatever problems that China is facing, that is the favorite answer. My one month immersive tour of China revealed something else – its serious lacking of cooperation between teams.

In China, almost every company has a core team核心团队, and this also applies to non-profit Internet community. The members in the core team worked hard and were highly efficient. They trust each other and knew that they would benefit from the outcome. However, beyond the core team members, almost everyone distrust each other. I found this seriously impeded Chinese creativity.

Every latest and greatest product required a lot of people to support and to develop into a whole new industry, not to mention the other industries that supplied the main knowledge and components. Right now, I don’t see Chinese culture supporting that type of efforts. Most Chinese factories and companies were plugged into an existing foreign industrial ecology by supplying cheap products. Even Chinese producers like Haier had not produced anything new, but lower cost alternative to the existing appliances.

Good news for Americans is that culture is hard to change and therefore US will continue to take the lead in knowledge production for at least 100-200 years. But what should you do if you are a Chinese? That - is another topic too wordy for my little blog..

US - how will it end?

Lots of theories abound for an end to US dominance, and 'shift' to the east. However, most of the stories were told from the perspective of 'rise of china,' but not from that of 'inside' of America.

I do not think the rise of another nation will cause an end to a nation's dominance. A lot of the social network ties and infrastructure will continue to function even when other nations enrich themselves. Much like how British dominance did not come to an end even after Japan's rise. Its trading partners, ie colonies, still remain theirs for a long time.

The strength of a nation is much obtained by these network ties and infrastructure. By infrastructure, I also mean the dominance of English, international laws favoring US culture, US MNCs and their influence on nations policies, etc. However, there lies a threat indeed to the US dominance, and that is a risk of imploding.

I think no one can topple the US but itself. Recent years of catastrophic collective decisions brought itself to it current bad state - Enron, invasion of Iraq, financial crisis, and recently John Thain's bailing out of Merrill Lynch's employees using the government bail out fund.

I am suspecting these are all the American culture's own undoing. A culture of every man for himself, and believing that it will add up to collective good. However, these appeared to show that this mindset of fighting for oneself alone can become negative when present in someone at top office. Their actions are too significant to the livelihood of too many. As a result, top officers had to be shuffled every few years (4 years for presidents).

Now, everyone is hoping Obama is someone who can cleanse the internal injuries US had sustained last few years. He has to fight for many things, inclusive of selfish corporatism. All uphill battles.

No matter how it will end, this signaled a potential weakness in America, one itself ought to be aware of.

Netizen population surpassed 1b

Wow, actually I am awed by the small number. Considering we have 6b earthlings, 84% of us are still offline.

However, also consider that US + China consisted a total of 16% + 18% = 34% of all netizen population. These are the two countries we need to pay attention when talking about Internet usage.