Can you stop it?

I believe somewhere in one of my postings, I spoke about how weblogs had grown explosively rapid. However, this is not so in certain countries like China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt (Funnell 2008).

Before moving on further, let me share with you something I learn from Jurgen Habermas' theory on the 'public sphere'. The most important feature about this 'public sphere' was how the public used it in rational-critical debate in the eighteenth century (SparkNotes 2009). This rational-critical debate, thus, puts the government, and those who are in power, in checked (SparkNotes 2009). In those days, the 'public sphere' took place in a barber shop... or a bar.

Now that the world has evolved, the Internet has become the 'public sphere'. It has become a medium where the public can voice out their opinions on anything, and that includes the government... sometimes. See, in countries that I had mentioned earlier, the government actually suppressed such freedom of speech and democracy (Funnell 2008).

Antony Loewenstein, who visited this six countries and wrote a book called The Blogging Revolution, said that the government bans personal blogs and sites that could cause dissent and threat towards them (cited in Funnell 2008). In fact, we don't have to look far from home to see this happening.

(Source: http://www.deliberations.com.au/2009/08/poisoning-public-sphere.html)

The Malaysian government had tried to ban some Internet sites, particularly anti-government websites, sometime in the middle of last year. In the attempt to ban sites, police had raided Raja Petra Kamarudin's (he is the owner of independent online news Malaysia Today) house and 'seized a laptop, a scanner and some documents' (Hamid 2008).

Now, here comes my point. (I know, I talked so much and now i'm only getting to my point?) This modern 'public sphere', the Internet, cannot be stopped from speaking up. The Internet is so wide, it has infinite space in its world. If the government bans a site, another site will come up advocating the same issue. The Malaysia Today website was not available the Friday after Raja Petra's belongings were seized but there was a message that directed readers to a "mirrored site" which the government did not ban (Hamid 2008). (Well, the site doesn't work anymore since Malaysia Today is 'un-banned'.)

Thus, can we stop the 'public sphere' from talking? It doesn't necessarily have to be about anti-government issues. It could be about human rights, homosexuality, pornography... can anyone ban ALL of these?

I highly doubt so.



References:

Funnell, A 2008, 'The blogging revolution', ABC Radio National, 4 September, viewed 15 November 2009, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2351985.htm>.

Hamid, J 2008, 'Malaysia ban on anti-government website draws outcry', Reuters, 29 August, viewed 15 November 2009, <http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSKLR2429420080829>.

SparkNotes 2009, 'Structural transformation of the public sphere', viewed 15 November 2009, <http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/public/summary.html>.