Assignment 1

3-Comment


Mapmaking was an integral part of communication in history. Humans have been making maps since the Stone Age. In fact, mapmaking predated written language by several millennia. Maps were widely considered to be valuable keys to unlocking unknown worlds and enabled exploration and discovery.
Maps are important in history for several reasons which include economic and religious reasons. The information on most ancient maps reflected the mapmaker's cultural and religious orientations. For example, religious belief systems were directly reflected in many medieval European maps. Furthermore, the fact that maps were closely guarded and considered to be state secrets showed that they held valuable information like, mapping military areas.
Maps served many purposes in ancient times, including maritime navigation, religious pilgrimages, and military and administrative uses. They were also used instead as intellectual tools. Nowadays, maps are still used for the same purposes; however the technology is far more advanced. These days, people make maps online using tools like Google Maps API, and Google Earth.
However, some Arab regimes have banned the website like in Bahrain, Jordan and Morocco. The Bahraini government banned the website Google Earth for 3 days last year during the run-up to parliamentary elections; when bogglers used it to highlight the vast palaces of the Sunni aristocracy versus the slums in which much of the Shiite majority resides. Furthermore, more recently Bahraini bogglers have been intensely following the 'Bandar Gate', a scandal driven by revelations of regime plans to fix the 2006 parliamentary elections, and have produced a map of the city using Google Earth revealing vast appropriations for the royal family. These instances of online activism led the Bahraini government to briefly ban Mahmood's Den blog within the city. As for the Moroccan case, in March 2006, Morocco had blocked access to many blogging sites, such as Live Journal. Reporters without borders says that Morocco now censors all political websites advocating Western Sahara 's independence and Google Earth has also been added to the list of censored websites in Morocco.

4-Discuss

From this quotes, I think that Allen Palmer is trying to say that there are several factors, the most important of which is the evolution of technology that contributed to the development of international communication. And that cultural and social transition is explained only in some degree by technology. However, he is trying to draw our attention to the fact that technology has not always been used with good intentions. In other words, transparency remains an important issue. Technology can sometimes serve the evil purposes of some people. It is not always used in the right way. Sometimes, it doesn't serve the welfare of the public as it was meant to be. For example, new technology is redefining what is possible in telecommunications. It is doing so with a speed that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. The telecommunication industry today offers options to customer and benefits to society beyond the scale of anything we have seen before. But an important question to ask is, whether communications technology delivers real progress for people around the world or not. Therefore, technology is only a tool to better reach people , if used badly it can permanently disconnect them. It is a double-edged sword. Finally, I think that what is our author, Allen Palmer, is trying to say here is that by putting in mind the past experience, the international community can organize global communication on an innovative foundation that is able to encounter the challenges of our times and that would be compatible with their nature.