philipkd - Slashdot User

Comment Like a fortune cookie... (Score 2, Interesting) 554

by philipkd on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @12:26PM (#28111085) Attached to: Dot-Communism Is Already Here

Just add "on the Internet" to the key sentences and it all makes more sense.

The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism.

... on the Internet

These developments suggest a steady move toward a sort of socialism uniquely tuned for a networked world.

... on the Internet.

he aim of a collective, however, is to engineer a system where self-directed peers take responsibility for critical processes and where difficult decisions, such as sorting out priorities, are decided by all participants.

... on the Internet.

I wonder if these shocking cultural changes aren't as big of a deal as the Wired article makes it out to be, in that they're scoped only to the online world. The offline world may barely change in response. Then again, if everybody is more and more conducting most of their activities on the Internet, that's a different story.

Google Earth Raises Discrimination Issue In Japan 457

Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 24, 2009 @02:43PM from the outsourcing-the-risk-and-appropriating-the-benefit dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Times (UK) reports that by allowing old maps to be overlaid on satellite images of Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, Google has unwittingly created a visual tool that has prolonged an ancient discrimination, says a lobbying group established to protect the human rights of three million burakumin, members of the sub-class condemned by the old feudal system in Japan to unclean jobs associated with death and dirt. 'We tend to think of maps as factual, like a satellite picture, but maps are never neutral, they always have a certain point of view,' says David Rumsey, a US map collector. Some Japanese companies actively screen out burakumin-linked job seekers, and some families hire private investigators to dig into the ancestry of fiances to make sure there is no burakumin taint. Because there is nothing physical to differentiate burakumin from other Japanese and because there are no clues in their names or accent, the only way of establishing whether or not they are burakumin is by tracing their family. By publishing the locations of burakumin ghettos with the modern street maps, the quest to trace ancestry is made easier, says Toru Matsuoka, an opposition MP and member of the Buraku Liberation League. Under pressure to diffuse criticism, Google has asked the owners of the woodblock print maps to remove the legend that identifies the ghetto with an old term, extremely offensive in modern usage, that translates loosely as 'scum town.' 'We had not acknowledged the seriousness of the map, but we do take this matter seriously,' says Yoshito Funabashi, a Google spokesman." The ancient Japanese caste system was made illegal 150 years ago, but silent discrimination remains. The issue is complicated by allegations of mob connections in the burakumin anti-discrimination organizations.

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