Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of "Netizens"
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:17
happy to be here at Republica 2017, and I want to welcome those who made it. What I
00:25
want to do is say that this is the celebration of a book that was published 20 years ago. The title is on the history and netizens on the history and impact of use in the internet. It was published in English and Japanese in 1997, and we followed its trail
00:44
around the world and the netizens around the world. We'd like to report back a little bit about South Korea and China. Rhonda will give some background of the book and then speak about netizens and democratic events in South Korea, and then I'll talk a little bit about netizens in China. We hope
01:06
that there can be some discussion and comments and questions at the end. Hello, I'm happy to be here, and if there's any problem hearing, just let me know, so speak up. Today, by the way,
01:25
there's an election in South Korea, and I'm going to give a little bit of the flavor of what's come before what's happening. I thought, also, what's a bit splendid is that, essentially,
01:41
the netizens have been critical to what's happening in South Korea. I don't know how much people have this background, but essentially, I'm going to be giving the background both of netizens and of what's happening in South Korea. This May marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of the book, Netizens, on the history and impact of Usenet and the Internet.
02:07
Oopsie daisy. Okay, just give me a minute. If I hit it, will it work? Okay. We'll take a minute. If you see the two slides there, one is Candle Girl and Harami, and the other
02:27
is the former president of South Korea. There's the book in English and in Japanese, these
02:42
editions. For a minute, what I want to do is just give you a little flavor of the recent candlelight demonstrations that have been going on in South Korea. I'm going to be going back a bit because there's not a whole lot that I've seen that analyzes what's
03:02
happening in English, though in Korean, there very well might be. I thought, having the background of the previous demonstration and understanding what happened, a lot of the same things are happening with this one and have happened with this set of demonstrations. If you see here just quickly, the head of Samson is the first photograph, and then he's
03:30
using it as a marionette. The friend of Park Geun-hye, and that person is Chae Sun-sil,
03:41
and essentially it shows her pulling the strings on Chae Sun-sil. Essentially, this is the analogy of what people have seen has been going on that they were so upset about in South Korea and in the demonstrations. The demonstrations have been big concerts, and then there's been
04:05
various marches to different places. Essentially, the demonstrations have been totally peaceful. Then there's the former president tied up. I thought this is helpful as an image of what essentially people have presented as the image of what they felt had to happen to her.
04:28
Essentially, it went on until finally the prosecutors did in fact put a bunch of people from the Blue House, which is like the White House in the US, there's a Blue House in South Korea,
04:42
and put them into detention and into jail. They are supposedly awaiting trial, and that's a number of the people from essentially the government that was very recently the government. Today, by the way, there's an election. There were, I think, 13 candidates, and we should
05:04
soon know who's won that election. This will be a continuation of the struggle that's just gone on. There's just a picture of the candlelight and a little bit of the flavor of the fact there's many, many people, but essentially the light has come from the people's candles, and these
05:25
have essentially been at night. Essentially, what I want to ... The reason I think this is so important is two things. One, we live in a time of where there's the internet and there's
05:40
the netizens, and I hope to clarify why the netizens are a very important piece of what's going on. It's not just technology. It's very importantly the people and the connection of the people to that technology. Essentially, what's important about all of this is that essentially around the world now, there's a real crisis of democracy,
06:02
and South Korea has had it and has it continuing. Essentially, what they've been able to do is make some impact on this, and that's what we see is they've essentially managed to impeach and to put in jail a number of the people who are important officials in their country
06:24
and essentially have taken out of power. The election now is to have a new term for a new president. What they've managed to do is a little sensational. I thought it's not very well understood in general, and by looking at it, I thought it
06:44
gives us a sense of what the potential is of the netizens and the net, which you don't get, I don't think, as clearly anywhere else. Essentially, these demonstrations have gone on from October 29th to 2016. Sorry, October 29th,
07:06
2016 was the first candlelight in this new series. The last recent one was April 29th, 2017, and there were 23 of them. Basically, they've been on Saturdays, and I thought they've been occasionally when they've been another time.
07:25
Essentially, what I want to talk about is the vision that helped to inspire the creation and development of the net and how what's going on is, in fact, somehow the demonstration that that vision still has this tremendous importance. Then the other piece I want to talk
07:43
about is the emergence and development of netizens. First, a little bit of background. Essentially, in 1992, Michael Halbin, one of the co-authors of the netizen book, was a student at Columbia University, and he was online as part of Columbia University's connection to the internet.
08:05
That's 25 years ago. It turns out that in 1992, 1993, this was just when the internet was really beginning to spread. It had been worked on for 20 years in the research, but it was 20 years after that work that it then began to be spread and being used by
08:28
people all over. Michael was in a class, and he did a paper on liberty of the press on James Mills' article from 1825. I thought the importance of that is that that's very much what we see
08:43
going on in South Korea. I think it's the general idea we have to understand, which is that unless we can watch over government officials, government will be corrupt. When we went to South Korea, essentially, people said they understood that also. I thought that's
09:05
important because it means unless you have the oversight, you don't have a situation that you want. Essentially, those in positions to rule would abuse their power. That's a bit what James Mills said quite a while ago. Essentially, the point was that I thought
09:25
that Michael realized was that people need to keep a watch over government to make sure that it's working in the interests of the many and that the technology of the personal computer now makes that possible. It's important that we understand that and we figure out
09:40
what do we do about that. I thought in South Korea, that's what they're working on. I thought also what Michael was taking a class in computer ethics. In that class, he was told that he needed to do a project. Essentially, the project was to do research,
10:00
but the encouragement was not to use books. Essentially, he felt he would use the internet that was just developing, which was really not quite the internet yet. It was different networks and mailing lists and different things, but the internet was just really connecting people up in different places. He wrote a post, the largest machine where it came
10:23
from and its importance to society. Essentially, he said that he would write a paper concerning the development of the net that he's interested in exploring the forces behind its development and the fundamental change it represents over previous communications media. That he hoped to come to some understanding of where it's come from so as to be helpful in figuring
10:45
out where it's going. Essentially, what happened is that many people wrote him from many different places and basically said the net was something very, very special. It was special for making possible what those people wanted to do, but it was that also the people
11:04
who wrote him said they wanted everybody online. He put together all the responses that he got and he wrote something called Common Sense, The Net and the Netizens. It said, welcome to the 21st century. What he did is said, you are a netizen. I've always
11:22
felt uncomfortable saying that somebody else is a netizen, but I thought Michael at that point recognized that the people who had an interest in spreading the net, in having the net be something good and make the society better, that those people were
11:40
net.citizens or netizens. Essentially, the piece he wrote was a fairly substantial piece that he then put it online. He said, we're seeing a revitalization of society. The frameworks are being redesigned from the bottom up. A new, more democratic world is becoming possible. I thought what's interesting about this is that it's now common to hear
12:02
this in some ways from some people, but this is 20 years ago. I guess it's more than 20 years ago. It's 25 years ago. This was 92 or 93. I thought a lot of people seemed to say that this is a hopefulness, but I thought that the stuff going on in South Korea gives us the sense it's not only a hopefulness.
12:24
I thought another piece of what's important about what's happened with all this is what Michael realized is that not all people are netizens. I thought there was a dependency among some people who were using the net in various ways. The media started
12:47
using the word netizen, but what they meant is anybody online. What Michael felt is he had clarified that he hadn't called all users netizens. Netizens were those people who had a public purpose for the use of the net. It wasn't they could use
13:06
it for their personal needs, but the important thing was were they using it in a way to try to make the world better, to make the net something good for the world, et cetera.
13:21
This is basically that then we managed to get the book published in 1997 in May, so it's 20 years ago. There was a Japanese edition that actually was put out in October. That was interesting because essentially the book challenged at the time the commercialization
13:43
of the net. Sometimes the people calling themselves netizens were people taking up to try to make sure that the net was available for everybody and for general purpose uses. Somehow it wasn't easy to get the book published in the US because the US was more interested,
14:07
US publishers were more interested in having books that would help people make a million supposedly on the net or whatever. It was a bit of a struggle, but the fact that there was Japanese interest also in the book meant that that really helped us to get the book published.
14:30
Essentially what ended up happening is that Michael ended up being able to not only get answers from people just in general all around the different ways of using
14:45
the net, but he also got answers from some of the computer pioneers. One of the things he asked was is there anybody for whom the net helped to establish what the net is, who had the vision for the net? It was interesting that essentially a number of people said that the work of JCR
15:06
Licklider was in fact the person who had set the vision for the net. Michael had asked, what is that vision? There's JCR Licklider. Essentially what some people said was that
15:20
communities formed as people interacted and helped each other. This is sort of in the early time sharing uses of computers where you had several different people being able to use one computer in various ways. Licklider was a psychologist and he observed what was happening
15:40
and he sort of documented how something was going on that he felt was very encouraging in terms of the ways that people use it and then also that it had an effect outside of just the particular use that people made. Also he often talked about an intergalactic network. The intergalactic
16:01
network was essentially, he gave various meanings to it, but I thought the essential thing was that it was the grandeur of his vision, that he really had the sense that one, everybody had to be connected. If everybody was not connected, then the net would not be something
16:22
good. In fact, there was the basis for the net to be something really good for mankind according to his vision, if everybody was connected. There's other parts to his vision and his sense about the net, but I thought this is some of the fundamentals. Over the years,
16:40
there have been researchers who have taken up the idea of netizens and of people online who have taken up netizens, but essentially what I've found is that the most advanced examples of both the research and the practice of netizens are in South Korea. First, there's a proud tradition of protest and sacrifice on the part of the South Koreans
17:02
to win the minimal democratic rights they've gained. Secondly, South Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world where a larger percentage of its population compared with many other countries have access to high speed internet connectivity. My connection to South Korea started when I was reading, I looked at the financial times in the
17:28
library and this was February 2003. What I found in the headline on the front page, an article continued later on in the issue, was new presidents of South Korea elected by the
17:42
netizens. Well, that was a little bit amazing to me because here was somehow the netizens responsible for the election of the highest official in the government of South Korea. Of course, I had to learn more about what was this really all about. And so what I found was as I began to find the story of it, it was even more amazing
18:08
because it turned out that Nomu Young, who was a candidate from outside the political mainstream, that he had been a human rights lawyer fighting against some of the
18:21
very difficult situation that people had in South Korea with regard to a very repressive government. And somehow the netizens had taken on to back him to run for president. And so this was an unusual thing, but it was part of a whole series of things that
18:42
I don't have time to go into. But essentially he was backed by netizens. The netizens formed a different sort of political party that they called No Sammo, which was we love Nomu Young, essentially. And they basically got him elected.
19:00
Another piece of what was important about what I learned about South Korea was they use the word netizen only they have a slightly different pronunciation, which I can't quite duplicate. But they basically use the English word netizen to describe netizens. And another piece of what was a bit fascinating was in different ways I've learned that they knew
19:23
of the netizen book. But there was one particular research paper that showed that they not only knew the book, they also knew the sense of Michael's sense about the netizen. And I thought this was useful to read because it reinforces a bit the sense
19:40
of netizen. Michael Halbin defined the term netizen as the people who actively contribute online towards the development of the Internet. In particular, Usenet news groups or Internet bulletin boards are considered an agora where netizens actually actively discuss and debate upon various issues. In this manner, a variety of agenda are formed
20:01
on the agora. And in their activity there, a netizen can act as a citizen who uses the Internet as a way of participating in political society. So it's not exactly Michael's, but it certainly is understood and had a real flavor of it. So there have been also many commentators who have taken up the concept of netizen.
20:23
And I thought it was important not only to look at the use of the net and the practice of it, but also to look slightly a little bit at what people have said. And one of the people, Mark Poster, is essentially a media theorist. And essentially,
20:42
what he felt was that he was very interested in the relationship between citizens and government, but then he was interested in what happens to the citizen under globalization. And essentially what he felt is with globalization it becomes much harder for the citizen to be able to have some say with their government.
21:02
And so he was looking for some way that there could be something besides a defensive position. And essentially he saw the word netizen online and he felt that in fact the netizen was something very important because it was connected to media in a way as well as connected
21:22
to citizenship. And it was more than necessarily the citizen of one country. And so he felt the netizen might serve for an offensive challenge against the harmful effects of globalization. And I'm really shortening that here, but I thought what he says is useful. And I wanted to then give an example of this where I thought that it's been helpful what he
21:47
pointed out because in 2008 there were candlelight demonstrations in South Korea. And I was there the first day of them, but I didn't end up going to it. But then we left, but then I watched them from my kitchen in New York.
22:04
And essentially what happened is there's a world organization for animal health called the OIE, which stands for some French terms. And in 2007 the U.S. got the categories changed for judging the safety of beef. And essentially there had been a set of clear
22:25
categories, which I'm not at this point going to go into, but I can fill people in on this if they're interested. And essentially the U.S., if you have made cow disease, any cases of it, then under the old system you were clearly not
22:45
a risk person. There was a risk people were taking by taking your beef, whereas the new means of categorizing this meant they called it a controlled risk. And the U.S.
23:02
one out of 4,000 cattle, and Japan tests every cattle. So the U.S. is very, very bad on how much it tests and the danger that this represents. But in February there was a different, a new president came to power in South Korea, Lee Moon-bak, and he was inaugurated in
23:28
February 2008. And essentially they had censored the internet, so the netizens weren't able to act the way they had acted prior. But in early April there was an online petition by some
23:41
people who wanted to impeach him due to policies he had already instituted as of April. And then in April 17th, 18th, Lee Moon-bak, the president, went to the U.S. and made an agreement with the U.S. President Bush. And essentially the agreement was beef of any cut, any age, and with bone-in could be imported into South Korea from the U.S.
24:07
Basically people were very, very upset by that agreement. And so this is the middle of April, and people were discussing this online and talking about how frustrated they were with the fact that this agreement had been made and this meant that school lunches would be with
24:26
unsafe beef and housewives would be using it in safe beef. And so essentially there was a lot of disagreement with the president for having done this. And on April 29th there was a
24:46
South Korean TV station aired a documentary exposing the poor U.S. safety practices in inspecting U.S. beef for mad cow. And after that many, many more people were upset and were online discussing it. And so some middle school girls and high school students using a fan website
25:09
and other websites that it got spread to basically called a demonstration for May 2nd. And this is from April 18th to May 2nd. So that's not much time.
25:24
Basically what had been going on through that period of time was that the online discussion had been the main thing. And so it wasn't until May 2nd that something happened besides what was happening online. But essentially they called this demonstration and they were very surprised
25:45
15,000 people showed up. And from then on until August 15th they had basically nightly candlelight demonstrations. And essentially these were done at night. And then
26:00
some people would stay until morning. But basically people would have these demonstrations at night. People would bring their families. Essentially there was instruments playing them dancing, singing. There were heated discussions. There was a free speech stage. And what was interesting about this is this is South Korea in the 80s and 90s. Essentially
26:23
what they had is very somber and militant demonstrations. Whereas here this was a totally different situation. And essentially knowing this set of things one can then understand what we just saw with those the puppets and the kind of quality of the demonstrations that have just won
26:42
this impeachment, et cetera. Another very important aspect was that people would come with their laptops and they would be broadcasting what was going on around the country and around the world. Because I was watching it in the Bronx at that time. And somebody I had
27:01
met in South Korea who was then in the UK and her boyfriend was in South Korea. So she and I would talk online. By the way neither of us, well I didn't understand Korean. I don't know if she understood any. But essentially somehow we could have the sense of what was going on because we were able to watch it. And we would watch it nonstop at some times.
27:24
And so France 24, the international TV station essentially said in South Korea a new form of democratic expression has emerged via the internet. Its followers call themselves netizens and when demonstrating against the government they carry their laptops to broadcast
27:41
the event live. And so you just saw that going on. And then she interviewed somebody and what he said is what I want to do is inform people through the internet to provide with detailed information on the situation and tell them the facts the government is hiding. And so basically there were many, many people that had appointed themselves as the journalists
28:04
and they were spreading the story very substantially. All right and so people basically participated online and on the internet. I'm sorry,
28:21
online and in the demonstrations. And what somebody pointed out there were members of a cooking club, a classical music society, a fashion club, a US major league baseball watching club and other similar groups that were internet groups that basically came together to the demonstrations. And essentially what had happened was somebody, these were groups to discuss
28:45
cooking etc or classical music. They weren't to discuss politics but somebody in the group online would introduce what was happening and then other people would start to talk about it and then they basically came to the demonstrations. And people took up to bring snacks
29:02
with them, to give water out and to even take paid advertisements in some of the daily newspapers. And basically these groups hadn't engaged in politics before but somehow the fact of all this going on and it being so available and spread around that it really encouraged
29:22
people to take it seriously. And another important piece was people at the demonstrations were there were a lot of women, there were a lot of high school students, there were college students. Essentially it was a very broad set of people that went there and participated. And essentially a theory and practice of a more participatory form of democracy was being
29:45
developed by netizens online and in the streets of South Korea. And in looking at the 2008 candlelight demonstrations, however a particularly salient example was a set of things that happened on June 10th to 11th and I want to quickly just look at that. June 10th is a special
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day in South Korea and there was going to be a demonstration and it turned out it was the largest demonstration in recent history in South Korea that happened that day. But planning for it what happened is the the police brought shipping containers weighing 40 tons and eight of
30:24
them and spread them out and I don't know if you can see but the things they've covered over were shipping containers and that was basically blocking what's called the blue house which is where the president lives and works essentially. And so these were
30:41
set up to blockade and what happens is the netizens saw these being built. They called it Myeongbok's castle. They decorated it with all kinds of posters and things. And then they created an entry for Korean Wikipedia for it and called it a landmark of Seoul. And also some people brought styrofoam blocks to the demonstration and left them on the side.
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And at 12 midnight there started to be a lengthy discussion and I don't know if you can see it but in the bottom on this side are the people sitting and they're talking about
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what to do, whether to go over the blockade because they felt that the styrofoam blocks would make it possible to go over. So should they go over or shouldn't they? And essentially they debated this. People online would write to the people who were at
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the demonstration to debate it. And essentially what they decided after five and a half hours was that they would not go over it. They would go to the top of it and bring their banners and they also brought a banner that said that they wanted to communicate with the president. They didn't want to attack him. They wanted to communicate with him.
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And so essentially that was their decision that they had all come to a very lengthy and substantial debate. And this is just the shipping containers. Once they decided what they were going to do, then together they put together the shipping containers so that it would
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make it possible for them to go over it. And I just want you to see on the other side, one side are the people, the other side are the police buses filled with police. So had they gone over they would have had all the police essentially. And it's somehow
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what they did is they showed they could have gone over had they decided to but that wasn't their purpose. And so different people commented about this and one person said through this demonstration many netizens comment on the significant meeting of this event to ask what is democracy and what are the rights of citizens? Steps that participants made
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in order to climb on the container boxes showed what they wanted was not being against the government in a riot but being in mutual communication with the government. And I thought that's very significant somehow because the netizens are people who communicate. And essentially another statement was honestly I assumed that people would try to find a way
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to climb over the container boxes when they had been piled up during the day. But when I learned that the steps of styrofoam were built up after arguments and discussion by participants, not by a few extreme elements, I was really impressed. Even though we learned that problems should be solved by dialogue and textbooks, we are not used to having discussions
33:44
and are not willing to have arguments. And the person was just very impressed and essentially this is an example of democracy. And I thought in summary what I found is there are people looking at this and who had looked at it, South Koreans, and some of their
34:04
things have now been translated. So it's very helpful. And one of the people who had wrote a very, very interesting article called Analog Government Digital Citizens. And what he basically said is that analog politicians must realize that the internet offers an opportunity for a breakthrough to improve Korea's stagnant political culture. The candles lighting up
34:26
Gwon Ha-Mun Plaza are carrying the demand that representative democracy evolve into a new form suitable to the internet age. And essentially what he showed is that when it was impossible in Korea to have the discussion in the plaza outside, the netizens took up to do it online
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and then to move what they were able to do online, offline. So I think this hopefully sets a basis to see that it's really worth looking at what's going on in South Korea and trying to see what lessons there are that we can draw. Thank you.
35:07
Very well done. The reason I say that is she could have talked more but she promised me some time. I appreciate it. Pick up a little bit and talk to China. I will speak about
35:43
netizen activity in China. My case study is from China but netizens are active almost everywhere and so it's not somehow particular to China but it is an example from China. There are many situations in China where the activity of ordinary internet users
36:02
is that of citizens of the netizens. These netizens are contributing to a cultural revolution and the development of new citizenship of the 21st century. My study indicates that being on the internet increases for many a sense of collectivity and a desire to defend the use of the net
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for all. I offer this study to indicate a little how Chinese speaking netizens have demonstrated that active participation can expose negative roles of the mainstream media and of the authorities and even of academics and set some of the social and political agenda of China
36:43
in the direction of greater citizen participation. In the process netizens are finding new forms and new means to assert their will and value to society. But who are the netizens?
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There are more than 731 million internet users in China. More than 95% of them use the internet at least sometime on mobile devices. Many participate in online communities, some of whom also contribute over 280 million Chinese language micro blogs known as Weibo. A smaller set
37:24
of net users are active contributors to forum and chatroom discussions. Among the users who actively contribute online I would locate net users who are netizens who practice some form of netizenship, that is they defend the internet and contribute actively to it
37:44
to affect social and political change. But my example is going to be about online gamers and some of them who act as netizens. Online game playing is popular all over the world.
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By one count there are over 1 billion online game players. Currently in China there are over nearly 400 million users who at least occasionally play online games of all sorts. At its peak there were 5.5 million Chinese net users who were playing the Chinese version of the American massively multiplayer online role playing game
38:29
World of Warcraft. Most of the time they would not be netizens, not in the sense I'm considering. But for those net users who play World of Warcraft using servers in China
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often there have been many pressures and restrictions that make their game playing use of the internet frustrating and uncomfortable. New releases of the game have been delayed for months as the game companies negotiate with the government regulators over what content must
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be modified or which ministry is in control. In addition especially after 2008 there was a major crusade against what the government media and academics called internet addiction. The government made concerted efforts to control, stigmatize and eradicate some game playing.
39:23
World of Warcraft became a target of much negative government and media attention. Social pressure on World of Warcraft players from the media, teachers and parents included sending young people to retraining camps to cure them of their addiction. Playing World of
39:44
Warcraft requires gamers to treat each other as equals and cooperate in their game tasks. Facilitating trust and friendship, gamers discuss their common frustration and plight on forums within their games and on online general gamers forums. Some set up their own game
40:06
servers, a growing number found ways of registering and accessing game servers outside of China, especially in Taiwan. The best known response that defended their gaming use of the internet and criticized their plight was a 64-minute animated video
40:26
named War of Internet Addiction. It was made with some source footage from the World of Warcraft computer game itself using dedicated software known as Machinima. In a war of
40:45
internet addiction, World of Warcraft player characters, the skeleton party do battle with the Green Monster for control of the Azerith continent. The Green Monster is unlike reference to the government's 2009 Green Dam internet content regulation project
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that was that project attempted to require all PCs in China to install software to filter vulgar content. It was of course eventually withdrawn because it wasn't feasible and everybody
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protested against it. In the War of Internet Addiction, the characters also do battle with shouting beast Yang, named after the real life Yang Yangxi, the head of the state-funded quote treatment and rehabilitation center for online addicts to the gamers. He's an example
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of a medical and academic establishment government in a paternalistic attempt to regulate their access to leisure game play. Shouting beast in Chinese is our home or phone, bun on the journey's word for professor. He is portrayed as an evil manipulative money maker
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resorting even to shock therapy to torture young so-called addicts. The narrative and action is full of parody and puns convey a message of resistance and community solidarity in a long war for the right to use the internet to play games of their choice without government
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restrictions and controls. It also playfully criticizes rampant commercialism, social inequality in Chinese society and the abuse of power. It satirizes social and political odd issues at the time. An example is portraying the corruption of traffic officials
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who exhort money from ordinary car drivers in a scheme called taxi entrapment or portraying the two government ministries that oversee game playing on the internet as two evil gods that have to be dealt with. Near the end of the video, the rebel leader
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Kang Ni-Mai gives a long and impassioned speech addressing the internet addiction treatment specialist. It begins, gang gong shin, we are the generation has grown up playing games. Over these many years people have changed and the games have changed but our love for
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games has not changed and the weak and disadvantaged status of gamers in this society has not changed. And we work hard for a whole day, come home to our high rent department, we face such a distorted version of the game, all we can feel is helplessness. Make no mistake,
43:44
yes, we are addicted but not to the game itself but the feeling of belonging that the game gives us. We're addicted to the friends and emotions we have shared over four years, to the nostalgia and the hopes and dreams we have placed in these games. We know it is
44:06
to the edge of the globe, to the place where there is no water but we still can't see that icy land. In the past year, I just like the others who love this game, diligent to go to work on a crowded bus, we never complained that our wages are low, we never lose our mental
44:24
balance due to those big townhouses you bought, the money you took from our meager wages, we mourn and cry for the flood and earthquake, we rejoiced and cheered for the man space flight in the Olympics, from the bottom of our heart, we never want to lag to any other
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nation in the world. But this year, because of you, we can't even play a game we love, oh, heartedly with gamers all over the world. Thanks to all you so-called brick owners, experts, shouting beasts, professors, aren't there enough eulogies, cosmetics and aesthetics,
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every day you have nothing else to do but enjoy your prestigious social status and point at us from ethical high ground. Have you ever wondered why five million gamers are collectively taking this net poison as you so describe our addiction to the virtual game and the deep
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pre-witted social reasons that are covered. We are accustomed to silence but silence doesn't mean surrender, we can't stop shouting simply because our voices are low, we can't do nothing simply because our power is weak, it's okay to be chided, it's okay to be misunderstood,
45:42
it's okay to be overlooked, but it's just I no longer want to be silent, shouting beast answers his speech in a condescending voice, nice speech but it's useless, you have a voice so what the power behind me easily overwhelms all your voices. By the end of the video
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shouting being yang, shouting beast yang is defeated but he warns another beast will be selected, giving the impression that the war will go on and go on. The idea for the video and the director of its creation uses the online name corn dog, he's a player and lover of world
46:24
of warcraft, he and some other gamers had two previous videos and were asked in online forums to make another. He gathered a technical team of about 100 gamer volunteers, most unknown to him and used online chat sessions and email to discuss the character emotions and the dubbing,
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sending files back and forth by email. It took three months, very time consuming, voluntary, collaborative online work to make the video, I'll try to be good. Corn dog was at the
47:01
time 26 year old engineer in Beijing, on January 21st 2010 war of internet addiction was posted on a few video sharing sites, it was viewed and forwarded to so many and millions of people viewed it within the first few days. It captured the attention of tens of millions of gamers
47:24
but also many others not only in China but around the world. Some netizens handed Chinese subtitles so speakers of different Mandarin dialects could understand it, English subtitles were added by a Chinese student in New York state in the comments posted on the video sharing
47:42
sites and elsewhere. Many said they were moved to tears because the video captured so well, their own feeling of the hardship of life as a gamer but also in general. Some people posted that the game made them feel alive and valuable and why would they be pressure against people
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playing a game. In China the average amount of time users spend on the internet is almost four hours a day, many gamers likely spend more than that. For over half the population of China being online is a normal part of everyday life, war of internet addiction appears on the
48:25
surface as a video created for a rather restricted consistency, constituency. But it has been viewed and shared and commented on by so many tens of millions of people
48:40
because it captured their grievances and desire for change so in fact it served a larger purpose. Corn Dog and its collaborators served the public purpose of airing the grievances of the world of Warcraft gamers, defending the rights of online gamers and criticizing restrictions and control in the society. To me they were netizens,
49:06
to make together with many other netizen created videos, moves, memes, the creators of war of internet addiction contributed to an emerging culture from the bottom, a culture able in a
49:22
playful but serious way to present grievances, make criticism and rally communities to represent themselves. For the most part they have learned how to even satirize and criticize the censorship without being censored. Just quickly as a conclusion the net empowers people in every
49:43
society toward a greater participation in more and more aspects of their societies, some of that participation takes the form of watching over the media or defending the ordinary people and gamers rights is in the video war of internet addiction. Netizens everywhere are contesting for a better society, their acts are spreading online,
50:05
as online users find ways to contribute, as Michael Albin wrote, a revitalization of society, the frameworks are being redesigned for the bottom up, a new more democratic world is becoming possible. Thank you. Well thank you very much, we do have some time I think for if
50:33
you have questions, do you have any? Yeah there is one. Yeah thank you very much for pointing to
50:44
these efforts made by netizens around the world. May I add that maybe we in Germany can learn a little bit of that spirit that there is the power to influence by the power of the word through the means of the internet because we recently have coming from the top down
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discussion to censor the net while you don't know who the censors are and they would decide how to censor it. So I think this stands for the power of the words, the power of discussion is very important. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to say something?
51:23
No. Do you have any comment? If I have any comment. Let me think, I mean I think it's interesting that you make it very, it sounds very optimistic still and that's kind of surprising because a lot of the discussion at the moment is kind of like not so much more in the spirit of
51:44
it will be the changing factor, it's more what he was saying that there's a lot of censorship, a lot of centralization and so I find it very interesting that you are very helpful. Maybe you could say two or three words to that. Right well in 1997 when we put the book
52:03
and said this is our new book and we gave a similar talk, people said you're too optimistic and that was 20 years ago. In those 20 years they've been like Tunisia and there's been South
52:21
Korea and in China. The people of China have never been able to be citizens, they've always been the subject of the emperor someplace far away and they can't understand each other because they speak different dialects but when they type on the internet they use the same characters and so for the people of China they found a way to find each other and to see themselves
52:44
as responsible somehow. They want a better China and the internet gives them a chance to say that and so I think the optimism is not a personal good feeling, it's an observation that where the internet has come people have fought to make it into something better for themselves
53:02
and in many places they've succeeded and failed and succeeded and failed and this is the early birth of this new phenomenon but from my point of view it has proven itself over these 20 years. I thought what's sort of amazing is this is the 20th anniversary of the book and I thought the South Koreans have made a very important party
53:24
for the book so somehow that's very significant and I guess I hope to find a way to understand the significance of that but as you say when we go places we hear hate speeches
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talked about and that seems somehow predominant but netizens is called you know maybe it said that's optimistic but it's not optimistic it's happening in a very substantial way and I thought the mainstream media somehow isn't able to cover it and so it's up to the netizens
54:00
to cover it and so if you don't know about it then I think one you don't quite understand what's happening in the world but two then you're not optimistic and so I thought it's really important that we find a way to understand not only the internet but
54:21
the netizens because a lot of people say oh the net it's only like some something you can use or it's you know it's but it's a question of the netizens and what the people are doing with it and it's what's interesting is I've been when I do research I basically sometimes look for netizens and what I find is all kinds of things are happening in many
54:42
different places so South Korea is the most amazing really and very it's lots of ups and downs there too but it's also that they're somehow achieving something and it's very important to somehow have some idea of how this is happening and what's happening so yeah so how
55:02
do we get more the word out and we appreciate the fact that we got to have this presentation here so that yeah thank you you're very welcome thank you very much maybe a round of applause.
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