I've just finished reading this news article (http://www.news.com.au/technology/south-australian-state-government-gags-internet-debate/story-e6frfro0-1225825750956) detailing the introduction of government censorship over anonymous political speech on the Internet, including on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Yes, in Australia. [yells] "IN MY HOME! IN MY BEDROOM! Where my wife sleeps... and my children play with their toys." (Apologies. Greatest movie of all time though, no?)

This follows hot on the heels of news that the Australian Federal Government will be introducing mandatory ISP internet 'filtering' (http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Mandatory-ISP-filter-due-mid-2011/0,130061791,339300060,00.htm?tag=mncol;txt).

Confusion is intensifed at this backward picture being portrayed of the 'Lucky Country' to the outside world, with recent news that pornography featuring A-cup starlets will be refused classification, as it suggests child sex (http://www.geekologie.com/2010/01/discrimination_australia_bans.php). This may be a point of comedy, almost, however it is serious. Very serious. (Really, kinda.)

The sum effect of all this is a distinct feeling of unease and distance towards the land of my birth, as an expat reading this constant flow of disappointing news from a great distance. Frankly, I'm left to ponder as to how Australia has ended up behaving in such an arrant Kim Jong-Il fanboy manner!?

The deeper one digs, the more one realises Australia has never been at the forefront of freedom of speech; for starters, the Australian Constitution does not actually expressly protect it, though the High Court ruled in 1992 that this was 'implied' in said Constitution due to it being an essential requirement of democratic and representative government; i.e. that system which had been established (http://www.hrcr.org/safrica/expression/freedom_speech.html). It nevertheless strikes me as ultimately bizarre not to have stated such explicitly - quite shocking, in fact. Then again, this is a country where homosexuality was illegal until as recently as 1997 in one of its states (Tasmania). Okay, I agree - Tasmania isn't really part of Australia... ;-)

That last tidbit was picked up from Google Australia's official response to the government's mandatory ISP filtering proposal, which I encourage all interested parties to read as it is an intelligent and considered response (http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/12/our-views-on-mandatory-isp-filtering.html). It also adds perspective to the debate, labelling the scheme as "the first of its kind amongst western democracies."

'Australians all let us rejoice', indeed.

Last night I dusted off a book on poetic form I purchased a while ago however have not gotten around to read, such are the long tangents my mind's wanderings seem to take. In its introduction, I came across a wonderful sonnet by Keats which alludes to the masters of the art and their immortality, whilst quite self-effacingly suggesting his own attempt may fall quite short of that lofty confidence of, let's say, Shakespeare:

Here is Keats' marvellous combination of deference and yet subtly contrarion remark:

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!-then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
(Keats, 1817)

I enjoy Shakespeare's ego and belief of the permanence of his lines which transcend the very destruction of the world in which they take their form and indeed reflect upon. In some ways, being not entirely lacking in (oft misplaced) self-confidence myself, therein lies the personal attraction of the art of the written word. Paradoxically, I also greatly admire the self-effacement Keats shows, arguably far more aware of his place in the grand scheme (and certainly more grounded) as a 22 year old than Shakespeare was as a (most likely) 30-something celebrated genius.

Then again, Keats hadn't met with great critical acclaim as a poet (and never did in his lifetime), and so would not have had a cloud of over-confidence, however well placed in Shakespeare, as the bard clearly possessed. I am certainly not burdened by any such impediments either (I know, shocking), and so I take Keats' sentiment as my Romantic inspiration moving forward into what is hopefully a more regular engagement with ars poetica, leading to a re-engagement with the actual writing of poetry.

After all, more than any other form of literature, poetry is a participation sport.

(Image cred: http://www.iftheytweeted.com)

Bare with me on this one - it's lengthy and convoluted. And really not very profound. (Disclaimer: read the synopsis of this blog.)

Immediacy can quite safely be considered a fairly firm tenet (or at the least, benefit) of the interweb; try fumbling through the index of your Encylopaedia Britannica (those who dare sayeth "World Book" are officially banished from my 'readership' for not being counted in the legions of Anglophiles, even unwittingly) versus typing in Wikipedia, or Google. If you get to your information with any sense of alacrity, you should bottle your freakish librarianship 'skillz', buy a lottery ticket, or remove the bookmark and start again.

So with this amorphous context in head, I happened upon a blog post from Bladam 2.0 (apparently an Adam who works for Google, no less) hearkening back to the compromised times of the Iranian elections earlier in the year. We all know the story of a small social networking site breaking news a little earlier than traditional larger news agencies/organisations, and it was apparently no different this time around...

Queue rant:

"... [people say to me:] don’t you want information right now?  How can you wait a day or even a week to learn what’s going on?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!1

To that, I’d reply with the following question:  Why do you value immediacy over depth, accuracy, and understanding?  Or, better yet, what difference will it make in your life to know about the Iranian election mess one day sooner?  Will you be able to change anything?  Help anyone?  What will you and the world lose by waiting a few more hours?"

(Read more @ http://www.bladam.com/#ixzz0QcbJsJho)

Without dissecting the pros/cons of the detail (a snippet would include argument that immediacy doesn't preclude "depth, accuracy, and understanding", nor indeed pejoratively affects the release cycle of journalism thereof - if anything quite the opposite - so why bother even getting perturbed), I must say I've been left unsure as to my feelings towards the wider insinuation; viz., we should reject immediacy, nay, there is something 'incorrect' in cultivating our instinctual desires when it comes to our online behaviour.

[I don't wish to make this post focus on disagreement with someone else's argument (I must be ill), so at this point I take polite leave of Bladam 2.0 and thank him for the inspiration.]

My purpose is not even to answer the question myself but rather superficially study the subject and raise my rhetorical eyebrow at the peculiarity of the purveyors of the online industry (I being one of them, I suppose), and the trends to which they/we seek to align the community over which we are overlords. [Insert maniacal laughter here, and/or impromptu performance of Zepellin's 'Immigrant Song'.] Namely, and to employ an endearing euphamism the very presence of which will subtly contribute to this point of mine, we do regularly cultivate our baser human 'characteristics' in the online realm whereas in wider Life (apparently it exists), we do quite the opposite.

I agree, the sense is tenuous if indeed extant, so I'll extrapolate on this last sentence. Bare with me whilst I self-gratuitise.

In essence, when developing a [good] website, we pander to the lowest common denominator. Accessibility, user experience, information architecture, optimisation, SPEED. Everything is or alludes to the fact that we are an impatient and ignorant species; that if we're not treated like four year olds, we'll quickly give up on a potentially promising and insightful journey of discovery rather than pursue it until the end, simultaneously sating that spark of curiosity apparently embedded in our combined psyche. There is never a notion of looking at marketing research as anything but fact of religious magnitude that needs to be heeded lest the brimstone appear; instead of questioning the hypothetically unpleasant (to our minds as creators of a site) behaviour derived from the above traits of the human online public when looking at an analytics report, we rarely seek to counter this with a high-ground stance of "we have built it, and though they're not using it correctly, though they should, so let's have pie"; instead, we appease the money men by tweaking and eventually reaching for those all important KPIs.

I personally cannot poke a hole at this attitude in context. It is logical and makes business sense.

But that's not very human. The above sits in diametric opposition to the implicit streak of self-improvement, or as it is my pet wont to describe the phenomenon, self-loathing, that distinguishes us from 'the animals'. We as a species can be characterised by our desire for aspiration (pun intended). We aspire towards that which we do not have; if we do not have something, we certainly cannot be or pass off characteristics from that which we are not in possession, and usually, these characteristics are perceived as would-be positive to our personal egos. We therefore aspire to improve (this isn't merely material), or more specifically, we seek to make ourselves more distant from those natural traits we primitively possess. In short, we make ourselves 'civilised' and are permanently in search for refinements of this concept throughout our existence, in the manifold ways that said refinements manifest themselves.

Bringing it back to the land of the living, this is simply not the case when studying online behaviour, and specifically communication (either between a brand/company and the public, or between peers). More involved mediums (by way of opportunity for greater communication therein) that would facilitate increased intellectual nourishment, or at least stave off the decline in our own standards and expectations of conspecific communication, have fallen in popularity compared to the ADHD of the Twitter's of the world. Development of the most popular sites on the web are not driven by repeat experiential anatomies, but rather in-out transactional equations of usage. And this trend looks likely to only become more severe.

This would be a real shame if it were to exist independent to motivations of the online community for being, well, online, and thus through some abstruse mechanic artificially impose upon the betterment of us all. Of course this isn't the case. The simple truth is the economics of supply and demand are at play here, and as with any scrambling to tweak a user journey to accommodate the lowest common denominator for a client, the important thought is the action is being performed because the denominator is common. We simply get what we ask for, and no truer is that sentiment found than on this most democratic of internets.

Bladam must reconcile himself (I'm sure he has) with accepting that it's a simple case of demand for the Twittersphere to provide this superficial news coverage immediately and "depth, accuracy, and understanding" a time later, and I'm left to contemplate: if immediacy is aligned as much as argued with an tacit online encouragement of our ignoble traits, would Adam and Eve have tweeted?

And there's the rub...