Reflections on a BBC Radio Programme about the Decade of Internet and Google

An insightful analysis of the age of the internet dominated by Google. Below is the web link to the programme where it is available for listening until 21st December 2009:

BBC Radio 4 – Defining the Decade, A Googling We Go 15th December 2009

As a new decade is coming near, we could not help but wonder what we have done and what we have experienced in the past ten years. So much of what the world has done in the last ten years has to be carried out via a screen, a keyboard, and the internet.

The programme recollects memories and interviews key e-entrepreneurs, Google employees as well as ordinary internet users who witnessed events and symbols that outline the growth and maturing of the internet since 1999: the millennium bug, the dot-com boom and bust, blogging, and Facebook. It touches upon topics such as the explosion of information that calls for powerful search engines, the internet as an extension of the real world, the internet censorship in China, the balance between sharing and protecting creativity, and our alarming yet growing dependence on machines to process information for us.

K.C.

Silent Identity

To be honest, I wouldn't say I've done a very good job on my dissertation these days. Finding it hard to do all the transcriptions myself and summarise them in a shiny but logical way, I nevertheless enjoyed it. I'm amazed at the fact that all of my interviewees seemed puzzled when asked a short question, 'What is your cultural identity?'

'Fifty-fifty, maybe.'

They were born in the UK, or have immigrated here at a very young age with their Cantonese-speaking parents, and have been brought up in an English neighbourhood, sent to an English school, where they have made mostly English friends. I don't feel confident to comment on what they are, but I can feel that there is a trapped-in-the-middle dilemma there between two cultures, not considering, of course, any pressure they might feel at my presence, such as 'he loves to hear this', which I was unable to avoid.

One example of the Chinese-style humility, in a country where they are a minority, would appear to be the unreadiness to preach a 'Chineseness' to others: they keep it to themselves. They observed and learned a western social manner and take it very seriously in their own restaurants, and treat those with contempt who do not follow it or who have not learned to follow it. They seem to think that they have ventured, and have seen it all, and do not want to proclaim themselves 'king' of anything, but prefer to remain silent, invisible, anything rather than be seen as threatening or trouble-makers. I could notice myself influenced by it. I felt stupid and stopped sticking Chinese calligraphy works on to my own door, and have not found Chinese characters useful ever since, except at times when someone asks me for a Chinese version of their given name.

Among so many Chinese who are in this country because they are in a university of somewhere, I may not have the best talent needed to approach Chinese families, while some others may not think it's necessary to do so. But here I am doing this. Learning what they are may give a piece of thought about what you are, and boost your confidence in it.