Sound Of Sirens

“For the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing the German TV-show Extra 3 starts a campaign supporting freedom of speech in China. Through this site we will publish censored pages of Human Rights Organisations such as Amnesty International, the Society For Threatened Peoples and the International Campaign For Tibet. This Extra 3-page is not censored by Chinese authorities at the moment and therefore gives Chinese people the opportunity, to gather relevant and oppressed information.

Extra 3 encourages internet-users throughout the globe to join us in the fight for freedom of speech. Let us try to inform Chinese people about this service, let us send information to China using every available channel bypassing the censorship.”

“… Derweil hat sich das Satire-Magazin “Extra 3″ des NDR etwas einfallen lassen, um zumindest die Sperrung von Webseiten im Pekinger Pressezentrum zu umgehen. Sie verweisen dabei auch auf die Hilfestellungen zur Umgehung der Internet-Sperren für Journalisten, wie sie der Chaos Computer Club seit einigen Tagen bereitstellt. Darüber hinaus veröffentlicht die “Extra 3″-Redaktion über die eigene Website, die nicht gesperrt ist, auch die in China eigentlich zensierten Seiten von Menschenrechtsorganisationen. Da die Seiten als PDF-Dateien innerhalb eines Containers der NDR-Site angezeigt werden, dürfte es den chinesischen Zensoren auch nicht so leicht fallen, diese Seiten gezielt zu sperren. …”
Heise.de, 08.08.2008 / s2k

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Ok, this is about the media and its functions. Again: I do not claim to be an expert, call me a generalist, however, let’s see how far we get.

I’ll start with a quote of a beautiful essay by Donella Meadows, a professor, biophysicist, systems analyst, organic farmer, author, journalist and inspiration in the movement for sustainability. The essay is called ‘Dancing with Systems‘ and this particular part is about ‘Honouring and protecting information.’

A decision maker can’t respond to information he or she doesn’t have, can’t respond accurately to information that is inaccurate, can’t respond in a timely way to information that is late. I would guess that 99 percent of what goes wrong in systems goes wrong because of faulty or missing information.

If I could, I would add an Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not distort, delay, or sequester information. You can drive a system crazy by muddying its information streams. You can make a system work better with surprising ease if you can give it more timely, more accurate, more complete information.