Ants with food 2

challenge 2

antswithfood

challenge #1

anotation

Ferenstein, Gregory. "Trickle-Forward Economics: Scott Harrison's Water-Based Experiment In Viral Philanthropy." Fast Company 25 Oct. 2011. Print.

This article talks about how Charity: Water has used social networking to allow people to ask for donations instead of presents for their birthday. It talks about how they have created cites that allow people to donate money and how they’ve use twitter and facebook to promote their idea.

Yap, Jamie. "Social, mobile boost small nonprofits' reach, relationships." ZD Net 13 Oct. 2011. Print.

            This article talks about the importance of social media. It talks about the ways that social media has helped nonprofits organizations. It talks about how it helps them appeal to younger generations.

Yap, Jamie. "Social, mobile boost small nonprofits' reach, relationships." ZD Net 13 Oct. 2011. Print.

            This article addresses some of the arguments against using social media and offers counter agreements about why you should use social media. It’s main two points are that social media is not expensive and a lot of people use it.

Blogpost 10

Facebook and its user have created a super organism. A super organism is something with multiple organisms. I think it's safe to say that facebook has multiple users. There are millions and millions of people on facebook. All different types of people use facebook for all different reasons. It's population is always growing.
Another characteristic of a super organism is that one organism cannot survive on its own. One person cannot be successful on facebook on their own. If one person has a facebook and no friends, no one will know that they are a facebook user. Therefore facebook users are reliant on each other to be successful facebook users.

blog 8

In this post I will argue why the US government should intervene with the Chinese firewall. The United States should get involved to increase China’s freedom. The current system is a violation of simple human rights. With Chinese government having as much control as it does it makes it easy to create propaganda and it robs people of other viewpoints. The US should intervene to give the Chinese people a voice and to allow them to be heard.

The current system quite simply is a violation of human rights. As A. Lin Neuman points out his article people are getting sent to jail just for speaking out, “On June 3, 2000, police in Chengdu arrested the founder of China’s first human-rights Web site, www.6-4tianwang.com. Huang Qi was accused of “subverting state power,” a charge that could land him in jail for ten years, (3).” There is no reason people should be punished just for speaking their minds. Freedom of speech is a basic human right and it should not be taken away. The government should not have control over what people say. The US intervening would give Chinese citizens more human rights.  

The amount of control the government has over the current system not only takes away the voice of another it also promotes propaganda. As Neuman states, the argument is as old as Chinese Communism itself. Since the earliest days of the Chinese revolution, the media has been used to reinforce state power. Soon after the Communist Party was formed in the 1920s, underground cadres were placed inside Chinese newspapers with the specific task of spreading Party propaganda, (4)”. People only see what the government wants them to see. They will never know the opinions of others. This will to fewer educated people.

The US should intervene to give Chinese citizens more human rights. The people of china should be free to speak their minds. They should not be punished for exercising their human right. The government has complete control over what is seen and not seen. Allowing for complete propaganda. If the US intervened the people of China would overall have more rights.  

Blog post 7

Should the US government support or work against the great firewall of China? While there are many arguments in favor of the US working to tear down the firewall, I will bring up a few disadvantages to them working against the Chinese government. Helping take down the firewall is very costly which could really hurt the US’s already weak economy. Too much intervention by the US could hurt American companies and give China even less control. It is easy to see why the US should intervene with China but I will bring up a few reasons why they shouldn’t.

The US is already spending money too help end Chinese censorship. Jessica Droste Yagan, a master in public administration candidate from Harvard states, “Since 2003, the International Broadcasting Bureau for Counter-Censorship Technology has received more than $2 million in funding from the U.S. government to promote the development of counter- censorship software (13).” If the US government gets more involved it will have to spend more money. This could be extremely hurtful to America because the US is already in a recession. How would the US government find ways to pay for more involvement in China? Some may say that the US needs to work on the problems of its own country before it can help another.

Intervention could be harmful to US companies and may give the people of China even less freedom than they already have. Yagan brings up a common criticism of US intervention, “Critics charge that the bill will not increase the openness of the Internet in China but will penalize U.S. companies by forcing them to choose between U.S. law and Chinese law and withdrawing from China entirely (15).” If American companies do leave China it will give the Chinese government even more power. China’s internet would be completely run by Chinese companies and therefore there would be even more censorship. Not to mention that fact that the US companies would lose money because they would have fewer people using their product. Censorship could cause American companies to make less money and the Chinese government to have even more control.

It is easy to argue for US intervention with China but there may be costly after math. The US government has to think about the well being of it’s own people before it can worry about another country’s people. The US needs to find ways not to spend money instead of ways to spend money. Also it may be difficult to find a way for the US government to intervene without hurting both countries more. While it seems like a no brainer that the US should definitely come to China’s aid there may be some serious drawbacks from them doing so.

Citation: Yagan, Jessica Droste. 2006. “Working Around the Great Firewall of China: Recommendations for U.S. Internet Companies.” Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative Student Paper No. 2. Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.