[Sigia-l] NWWW

[Dave]

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 14:07:00 +0200, Eryk Orłowski > first, i
completely do not agree with thesis of the article - The World Wide
> Web experience is becoming less and less worldwide: What you see and what
> you are allowed to do these days can depend greatly on where and even who
> you are - it is internally inconsistent to me.
> 
> idea of geolocation leads to content geo-targeting - how to show content
> that is the most valuable for user, depending on his location. think
> globally, display locally ;)

Eryk,
I do think that the uses in the article are definitely pretty benign,
but what about in a world like ours where more and more of media is
owned by less and less of the world. What if FOXnews.com in its battle
to keep the Bush administration alive decided to show one type of news
for people in the US, but for the outside world to keep ratings up
they displayed a more "fair and balanced" report? Yes, it is
geo-specific content, but the aim of it is pretty maliscious.

I also think there is something else that is lost in all this, which
is the anonymity factor of the Internet. What made the WW part of the
WWW is that you just didn't know. There is a freedom in that the WWW
wasn't just world wide, but it was borderless. This is what enabled a
lot of the "freedoms" for good or bad to exist on the net without too
much "fear". Meaning, if you wanted to set up a casino offshore then
no one could stop you, unless the country itself had a firewall of
some kind like China does. The same was true for file swapping
companies. It was great to blur the borders and it was working to tear
them down. With geo-location technology, the borders are being
re-defined again and we are taking a step backwards from a very
different type of planet.

-- dave