In The News

Infiltrators of North Korea: Tiny Radios

James Brooke March 3, 2003
During the Kim family’s 60-year rule over North Korea, the rest of the world has witnessed a communications boom: especially in recent years the Internet, cell phones, and the rest of the “information revolution” have made it easy to communicate from thousands of miles away. But Pyongyang's communist regime has made it all but impossible for North Koreans to take part in that revolution....

How the Protesters Mobilized

Jennifer Lee February 23, 2003
Between the internet, cell phones, and text messaging, new ways are constantly being invented to disseminate information and organize large bodies of people across the globe. The February 15th worldwide protests against the impending war in Iraq stretched these means to their full potential. Protest organization can now be dispersed, non-hierarchal, and in tune with up-to-date information....

Anti-Terror Fight Has to Be a Marathon Run on Wilsonian Principle, Not Cheap Oil

Thomas L. Friedman February 8, 2003
Who were the September 11 hijackers? What impelled them to bring about "such a bursting of the frontiers of civilization"? Thomas L. Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist at The New York Times and author of "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," spent the last fourteen months traveling to find answers to these questions. In an address at Yale University, he offered his personal...

Filmmakers Seek Protection from U.S. Dominance

Alan Riding February 5, 2003
The World Trade Organization has begun a new round of negotiations on trade in services, and European filmmakers, fearful of foreign media giants intruding further into domestic industries, are hosting a cultural convention at the Louvre to campaign for continued cultural protection. Although cultural products are currently exempt from the regulations of the WTO, American and other international...

China Has World's Tightest Internet Censorship, Study Finds

Joseph Kahn December 4, 2002
"Defying predictions that the Internet was inherently too diverse and malleable for state control, China has denied a vast majority of its 46 million Internet users access to information that it feels could weaken its authoritarian power." That's the conclusion of a new survey of internet use in China done by a team of researchers at Harvard University. The six-month study found...

Here’s Your Leaders, Thanks for Tuning In

Max Woodworth November 17, 2002
While the Chinese national media only managed a broadcast of 10 minutes on the transfer of national power, foreign media such as CNN went into detail, analyzing the implications of the change. Because of China’s one party authoritarian system, political debate is discouraged, and thus the national media felt no need to go into much depth on the subject. When domestic media proves inadequate,...

Gates Urges IT, Education, Telecom Funds

November 13, 2002
On his four-day tour of India, Bill Gates encouraged investment in India’s information technology sector. Though Americans and Europeans tend to emphasize the recent slowdown in the information technology industry, Gates expressed faith in India’s potential for growth in that area. He dismissed concerns that the Linux operating system would pose a threat to his own company, Microsoft. Gates...