Anomie in Europe

How to integrate Europe’s Muslims

Two weeks ago, dozens of cars were set alight in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand after a 30-year-old truck driver, Wissam El Yamni, was roughed up and then died while in police custody. The uproar underscored the hostility of young minority men towards authority across communities in Europe, an antipathy that has at times led to deadly violence.

The failure of Islamic integration in Europe is often attributed – especially by right-wing parties – to an excess of tolerance towards the large-scale Muslim immigration that began in the mid-1970s. By recognising Muslim religious requirements, the argument goes, countries like France, Britain and the Netherlands have unwittingly hindered assimilation and even, in some cases, fostered radicalism.

But the unrest in gritty European suburbs stems not from religious difference, but from anomie.

Should Scientific Research Ever Be Limited?

A key concern of allowing unlimited scientific research – however well-intentioned – is that the negative consequences might outweigh the good of their findings. The recent self-imposed moratorium by H5N1 influenza scientists reflect the crux of that concern.

No end to complications

IN DECEMBER boffins around the world were taken aback by an odd request. The American government called on the world’s two leading scientific publications to censor research. As we reported at the time, Nature (a British journal) and Science (an American one) were about to publish studies by two separate teams which had been tinkering with H5N1 influenza, better known as bird flu, to produce a strain that might be able to pass through the air between humans. The authorities fretted that were the precise methods and detailed genetic data to fall into the wrong hands, the consequences would be too awful to contemplate. They therefore suggested that only the broad conclusions be made public; the specifics could be sent to vetted scientists alone.

McBaguette Anyone?

You don’t need to be a business student to appreciate how the success or failure of certain companies sheds light on the importance of contexts, culture and people. Read the article below and consider why McDonald’s is fairly successful in Singapore as well. 

Born in the USA, Made in France: How McDonald’s Succeeds in the Land of Michelin Stars

France — the land of haute cuisine, fine wine and cheese — would be the last place you would expect to find a thriving fast-food market. In a country known for its strong national identity and anti-globalization movement, it seems improbable that McDonald’s could have survived the onslaught of French social and political activism. In 1999, José Bové, an agricultural unionist, became a hero to anti-globalization supporters when he and his political group, Confédération Paysanne, bulldozed a McDonald’s in Milau, France, to protest against U.S. trade restrictions on French dairy products. With bullhorn in hand, he declared to the television news cameras: “We attacked this McDonald’s because it is a symbol of multinationals that want to stuff us with junk food and ruin our farmers.” In 2004, amid the nutritional controversy sparked by Morgan Spurlock’s documentarySupersize Me, McDonald’s was declared in French media to be the epitome of malbouffe, or “junk food” and deemed partly to blame for the nation’s rising obesity rate.

And yet McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast-food corporation, with a global presence in 123 countries across all six inhabited continents, has turned the home of Le Cordon Bleu cooking academies and the Michelin Guide of world-renowned restaurants into its second-most profitable market in the world. The chain has more than 1,200 restaurants in France — all locally owned franchises — and a growth rate of 30 restaurants per year in the past five years alone. What is at the heart of this impressive growth that has stunned French observers and surprised business analysts? The three main reasons for McDonald’s success are local responsiveness, rebranding and a robust corporate ecosystem.

Government for the People to Government with the People

Model of governance: Big govt or big people?

SMALL government, the opposite of big government, is aimed at reducing the role of the state in the economy. In taking a laissez-faire approach towards regulating the private sector, it is argued that small government lowers costs and promotes efficiency by allowing the market to determine prices and economic outcomes. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was a champion of small government.

But small government has not been seen as an unqualified success. Critics have cited increased costs of public services, unemployment and a widening wealth gap as some of the unintended consequences of small government.

After the 2008 global financial crisis that many blamed on unfettered greed and dysfunction in the private sector, we see evidence that the tide of public opinion is turning against small government. So the jury is out and the debate will continue.

PROTECT IP/SOPA: A Threat to the Net?

I’m sure you’ve heard about major sites purporting to go dark for a day in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Perhaps the most high profile site among them to is knowledge-sharing giant Wikipedia whose site solemnly proclaims:

“Imagine a world without free knowledge… The US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”

A broad overview of the bill is provided by The Wall Street Journal. You can get a detailed look into why this bill is supposedly dangerous in Mashable. The article carefully analyzes key sections and comments on the potentially incredulous and harmful consequences that might arise and inevitably threaten and subvert a free and open internet. On the other hand, Andrew Orlowski of the The Telegraph argues that the reason why SOPA exists because “no voluntary agreement is in place” among the large tech firms to more actively thwart piracy and protect copyrighted content.

What is your opinion on the protests? Are bills like PIPA and SOPA a necessary legislation to let governments reign in the pirated activities on the internet and protect the interests of content creators? Or is the bill overly broad in its execution, threatening the fundamentally open nature of the internet? 

Disadvantages of Capitalism

Look at the world around you. How does the economy move? How do we move things around and allocate scare resources in a world of unlimited wants? Is the current predominant system of capitalism with its economic and socio-political focus on privatization and the continuous pursuit of profit, really the best system we have at the moment, as argued by Francis Fukuyama? Or will the rumblings of its imperfections ultimately cause humanity to move on to a totally different system altogether, as envisioned by Marx?

As gleaned from ‘Occupy’ movements, it’s evident that inequality is a key gripe among many. Paul Krugman writes that if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would be utterly disappointed by how inequality between class continues persist although racial differences have been somewhat muted. Even the recent scrutiny on local ministerial salaries seems to suggest a growing desire to see the public office as something separate from the private sector’s high-income winners of the system. This list of the biggest disadvantages of capitalism also provides some insight into the flaws of the system that the may have received little media or government attention.

Is there a viable alternative then? Can you really imagine the world making a concerted effort in moving beyond this current system, or would minor tweaks suffice to keep everyone happy and progressing together? 

Surveying the Future Generation

I found Adecco’s survey of school children living in Singapore fairly insightful actually for three broad reasons:

Well firstly, children are brutally honest people I believe, so what you glean from the responses will most certainly be fairly authentic, rather than adult responses that often tend to second-guess survey intentions or are more conscious about the politically correct answer or image their answers may portray.

Secondly, the responses give us a sense of what kind of society we are, or at least what kind of society we try to make ourselves to be, and the values we seem to uphold. We may write off their responses are immature or childish, but truth be told – this is the world they perceive, or rather the world that is being projected to them. Even suggestions that the Presidency is the ‘coolest job’ is highly telling of how we – or the media – may have been over highlighting the ceremonial easy-life-good-pay role of the Presidential office. Mentions of dreams to be a tai-tai or billionaire seem cute, but what might such early thoughts breed in future?

Thirdly, the emphasis on ‘thinking about others’ – as inferred from the top career ambitions – is actually notable. I believe that kids do honestly and sincerely think about others a lot more in their younger formative years. Yes, such sentiments may fly in the face of developmental literature that charts stages of maturity according to age but such survey results perhaps offer a different view: the human being possibly being more naturally other-centered and actually becomes more selfish as he/she continues to interact more with the adult capitalist milieu.

What are your own thoughts on the survey findings? 

Doomsday Clock: Who’s Keeping Time?

Doomsday Clock Moved One Minute Closer to Midnight

WASHINGTON, DC, January 10, 2012 (ENS) – “Inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, and continuing inaction on climate change,” prompted the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists today to push the hands of the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight.

“It is five minutes to midnight,” said the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists group, announcing their decision at a news conference in Washington. “Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007.”

The Doomsday Clock now stands at five minutes to midnight. (Image courtesy Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

The last time the Doomsday Clock minute hand moved was in January 2010, when it was pushed back one minute from five to six minutes before midnight. The clock’s hands have been adjusted 20 times since its inception in 1947, when the clock was initially set to seven minutes to midnight.

The Doomsday Clock expresses how close this group of scientists belives humanity is to catastrophic destruction, symbolized by midnight on the clock. The group monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences that could inflict irrevocable harm.

“Inaction on key issues including climate change, and rising international tensions motivate the movement of the clock,” said Lawrence Krauss, co-chair, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Board of Sponsors and a professor with the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics departments at Arizona State University.

“As we see it,” he told reporters, “the major challenge at the heart of humanity’s survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions.”

“Even though climate change is happening and is getting more urgent as we speak,” warned Krauss, “no comprehensive global action is happening.”

Jiaxing coal-fired power plant in Zhejiang Province on China’s east coast (Photo by zpsohu (Panoramio)

“The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth’s atmosphere,” warned Allison Macfarlane, who chairs the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board and is a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on American’s Nuclear Future, and an associate professor with George Mason University.

“The International Energy Agency projects that, unless societies begin building alternatives to carbon-emitting energy technologies over the next five years, the world is doomed to a warmer climate, harsher weather, droughts, famine, water scarcity, rising sea levels, loss of island nations, and increasing ocean acidification,” said Macfarlane.

“Since fossil-fuel burning power plants and infrastructure built in 2012-2020 will produce energy and emissions for 40 to 50 years, the actions taken in the next few years will set us on a path that will be impossible to redirect,” she said. “Even if policy leaders decide in the future to reduce reliance on carbon-emitting technologies, it will be too late.”

Science skeptics who diminish and discount scientific findings are a “worrisome trend,” said Robert Socolow, a member of the BAS Science and Security Board.

“The world needs the political leadership to affirm the primacy of science or problems will be far worse than they are today, said Socolow, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and co-principal investigator with the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University.

He and the other BAS representatives at the news conference expressed concern that, in Krauss’ words, “politics trumps science” at a time when elections are coming up in the United States, Russia and France and new leadership is soon to take over in China.

Doomsday Clock graph. The lower the graph, the higher the probability of catastrophe is considered to be.(Graph by Fastfission)

Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first U.S. atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse – midnight – and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion – countdown to zero – to convey threats to humanity and the planet.

While the group is opposed to nuclear weapons, it neither endorses or does not endorse nuclear power. It maintains that nuclear power must be safe and if done well could help with climate change.

The decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

Jayantha Dhanapala is a member of the BAS Board of Sponsors, a former United Nations under-secretary-general for Disarmament Affairs (1998-2003), and ambassador of Sri Lanka to the United States (1995-1997).

“The world still has over 19,000 nuclear weapons, enough power to destroy the world’s inhabitants several times over,” he warned today.

United States Trident II (D-5) missile underwater launch (Photo courtesy U.S. Defense Dept.)

“Despite the promise of a new spirit of international cooperation, and reductions in tensions between the United States and Russia, the Science and Security Board believes that the path toward a world free of nuclear weapons is not at all clear, and leadership is failing,” he said.

As a positive signal, Dhanapala pointed to the ratification in December 2010 of the New START treaty between Russia and the United States which reversed the previous drift in US-Russia nuclear relations.

“However,” warned Dhanapala, “failure to act” on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty by leaders in the United States, China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, and North Korea “continues to leave the world at risk from continued development of nuclear weapons.”

“Obstacles to a world free of nuclear weapons remain,” agreed Socolow. “Among these are disagreements between the United States and Russia about the utility and purposes of missile defense, as well as insufficient transparency, planning, and cooperation among the nine nuclear weapons states to support a continuing drawdown.”

“The resulting distrust leads nearly all nuclear weapons states to hedge their bets by modernizing their nuclear arsenals,” Socolow warned. “Such developments appear to other states to be signs of substantial military build-ups.”

There are positive signs amidst the challenges, particularly the engagement of people in determining their own future, the group emphasized.

“The Science and Security Board is heartened by the Arab Spring, the Occupy movements, political protests in Russia, and by the actions of ordinary citizens in Japan as they call for fair treatment and attention to their needs,” said Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Executive Director Kennette Benedict.

“Whether meeting the challenges of nuclear power, or mitigating the suffering from human-caused global warming, or preventing catastrophic nuclear conflict in a volatile world, the power of people is essential,” Benedict said. “For this reason, we ask other scientists and experts to join us in engaging ordinary citizens. Together, we can present the most significant questions to policymakers and industry leaders. Most importantly, we can demand answers and action.”

Environment News Service (Original link here) 

Is the conception of a Doomsday Clock helpful for cautioning humankind? Or is it simply making us more paranoid or pessimistic about humanity’s future? 

Are We Truly Multicultural?

Singapore is not yet Truly Multicultural

The journey of the Muslim faithful to Mecca is a rare symbol of two intertwined quests during Hari Raya Haji.

First, the pilgrimage or haj displays the unity of the Islamic brotherhood, with Muslims of every background praying in Mecca, equal in the eyes of Allah.

Then, just as profoundly, the haj is a hopeful interfaith moment for the world.

Professor Syed Farid Alatas pictures these yearnings of the human heart as he reflects on the significance of Hari Raya Haji, celebrated by Muslims on Sunday.

“The rich and poor, scholars and the lowly educated, politicians and entrepreneurs, black and white and every colour in between all gather in one location,” says Prof Alatas, head of the Malay studies department at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

“It is probably the largest pilgrimage in the world,” he says.

“It demonstrates the unity of humans because all the faithful who are there come from different backgrounds.”

In parallel, a wider unity is at work because Muslims believe that aspects of the haj can be traced back to the Prophet Abraham, a patriarch revered by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. He says this helps to “predispose Muslims towards inter-religious understanding”.

“I know that many who have gone on the haj return with an increased conviction in inter-religious appreciation and harmony,” adds Prof Alatas, who is also an associate professor of sociology at NUS.

Muslims, instrumental in the 1949 founding of the Inter-Religious Organisation, are active in interfaith matters.

Thankfully, the “boring” set of interfaith interactions that he first encountered in the early 1990s has blossomed.

“I notice there is genuine friendship now,” says Prof Alatas, a leading proponent of interfaith dialogues.

He observes that religious leaders have visited one another’s places of worship and homes over the past decade. They have mourned deaths in the family. They trust one another.

“This is very important. What it means is, if there is an event which might result in what people fear, a riot or racial incident, that’s when you need religious leaders to calm their congregations.”

Singapore has arrived at a stage where religious leaders can rely on one another to dispel myths, correct negative statements or cool tensions.

He feels there should not be anxiety that participating in dialogue dilutes the distinctiveness of a religion. “That’s a gross misunderstanding of dialogue – that if you accept the rules and terms of dialogue, you have to dilute your faith.”

He elaborates: “Dialogue can also be about differences. A Muslim and a Christian can debate and will never agree on the Trinity. But it’s no harm. You do learn a lot from genuine dialogue, even about your own faith.”

Interfaith scholars have commented that as Islam is a close cousin of the other two Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Judaism, these are historical elements on which deeper dialogue can be built.

But sometimes that can be a problem, he suggests. “The way I look at it, each of these three siblings claims to know the father better,” he quips. “And each claims the other two got it wrong.”

While happy that religious leaders have achieved intimate, authentic friendship in the last decade, he feels this has not percolated fully to the masses.

“To put it bluntly, the Malays are seen as a relatively underdeveloped community.” There have been decades of writing since the 19th century, and also political or media discourse, that fault Islam as “a brake on development”, he contends.

“Until today, many people associate Islam with Malay backwardness, and consequently see Islam as a backward religion,” he says.

The idea that progress and integration could possibly come about if Malays are “less religious” persists in Singaporean thinking, he adds.

“I don’t think it’s a fading perception because the majority of non-Muslims don’t know much about the Malay community and culture, and Islam.”

In the West, he observes, university classes in Islamic culture and civilisation are popular with non-Muslims, as are Arabic, Persian or Turkish languages.

Prof Alatas also does not believe that Singapore is innately multicultural.

“We are not a multiculturalist society. We are multicultural in the sense that there are many cultures co-existing,” he says.

“But our orientation is not founded on the idea of multiculturalism. There isn’t a celebration of being multicultural or developing an admiration and interest in other cultures.

“Our education system does not breed multiculturalism. If it doesn’t do that, how do we dispel myths?”

The Malays themselves have myths that the Chinese are “cold, calculating and money-minded”, he adds.

Globally, there are myths and issues to resolve within the diverse Islamic world as well. The issue in Islamic reform, revival or resurgence is how best to appropriate from tradition, he says.

“The real challenge for Muslim society is to decide what understanding of Islam they want to put into practice.”

Is it more fundamentalist, or an enlightened multicultural spiritual understanding which feels very modern but is still rooted in tradition?

He points to Sufism, which he describes as traditional Islam encompassing the religion’s foundational beliefs plus centuries of civilisation infused with art, poetry, music, and theological and metaphysical doctrine.

“When you are rooted in civilisation and the great traditions of Islam, including Sufism which is by nature open and pluralistic, you can’t be influenced by extremist ideas.”

Extremism is tougher to uproot today, however.

“While Muslims have always rejected extremist ideology, today it is harder to confine because of a number of factors, including oil wealth and support from superpowers like the British who supported the Wahhabi alliance between the wars,” he says.

Wahhabism is the dominant sect in Saudi Arabia. It was founded by Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1702-1791), who allied with the House of Saud.

Prof Alatas is not pessimistic, but he does perceive that extremism has become more difficult to deal with in modern times.

Within South-east Asia, he believes that a knowledge of great men of the region can build a fuller diversity in dialogue.

Students know little about the region, including Filipino thinker Jose Rizal, “probably the most creative South-east Asia has produced”, he says. “In our bid to be global, we leapfrog the region.”

In the unifying spirit of Hari Raya Haji, he says: “We want to be truly cosmopolitan.”

Lee Siew Hua of The Straits Times (link here)

- Interview Excerpts -

Tolerance ‘is a bad word’

Beyond tolerance, what will the new normal in race relations require?

People in Singapore always talk about tolerance – but tolerance is a bad word. It’s a grudging acceptance of the other.

Perhaps that’s the problem in Singapore. We are polite people and we tolerate each other. But underlying the tolerance are irritation, lack of interest, certainly not admiration.

I mean, how many Chinese in Singapore have an interest in Malay culture, Islamic civilisation, its arts and poetry? And how many Malays have an interest in the achievements of Chinese civilisation?

Tolerance is not a good foundation for sustained peace and harmony.

What I have discovered is that the goal of dialogue between faiths is not to ignore the differences and just focus on the similarities.

The real challenge of dialogue is to accept and even discuss the differences, and to assert that in spite of the impossibility of reconciliation over these differences, it’s still possible to have respect and admiration for the other and not simply tolerance.

What are the underlying issues in Islamic reform or revival?

The real issue for Muslims in Singapore is Islamic reform – what to appropriate from the Islamic tradition.

All Muslims will agree that if we practise Islam in the way it should be practised, which means going back to the values of the early Muslim community around the Prophet, it would be a good thing and Muslims will be able to overcome their underdevelopment. Where they disagree is how to do that.

You have a few who think you have to literally reconstruct the kind of society the Prophet lived in, which might involve dressing like him or rejecting technology. Most people don’t accept that.

But you also have people with a narrow conception of how Islam should be lived today. It might involve a puritanical understanding of Islamic values and laws, for example, insisting on the death penalty for adultery, or claiming that many cultural practices are against the tenets of Islam.

Why do you express concern about Eurocentrism, and what is its impediment to multiculturalism here?

We are very parochial. We have exposure to Western literature and thinking, but how about African, Middle Eastern and Asian works? Rumi is a great Persian poet but hardly known to kids here. Teach him alongside Shakespeare.

We have for a long time been decolonised politically. There is such a thing as colonisation of the mind. It continues willingly, in academia and in general knowledge.

For example, where Malay studies is concerned, do we know what Singapore was like before the British arrived? The public perception is Eurocentric; people believe that nothing much happened before the British.

The recent work of historians and archaeologists shows that Singapore was an important commercial centre before Raffles. It was inhabited and multicultural, judging from artefacts. But for most Singaporeans, it’s a blank.

Proponent of interfaith dialogue

Professor Syed Farid Alatas, 50, is head of the Malay studies department and associate professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore, where he has been since 1992. The Malaysian national of Yemeni descent obtained his PhD in sociology from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1991. His books include Alternative Discourse In Asian Social Science: Responses To Eurocentrism (2006), and An Islamic Perspective On The Commitment To Inter-Religious Dialogue (2008). He is a leading proponent of interfaith dialogue. Active in the Islamic arts, he often organises Sufi musical nights and dance performances for the public. He is the eldest son of the late Malaysian scholar and politician Syed Hussein Alatas. He is married to Madam Mojgan Shavarebi, 49, an Iranian who is a Persian-English interpreter. They have three children, aged 11 to 20.

What are your own thoughts about the state of multiculturalism in Singapore? Rather than think abstractly or on a more macro-level, it might be useful to think about your own life experiences.

Internet a Human Right?

Internet Access Is Not a Human Right

FROM the streets of Tunis to Tahrir Square and beyond, protests around the world last year were built on the Internet and the many devices that interact with it. Though the demonstrations thrived because thousands of people turned out to participate, they could never have happened as they did without the ability that the Internet offers to communicate, organize and publicize everywhere, instantaneously.

It is no surprise, then, that the protests have raised questions about whether Internet access is or should be a civil or human right. The issue is particularly acute in countries whose governments clamped down on Internet access in an attempt to quell the protesters. In June, citing the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, a report by the United Nations’ special rapporteur went so far as to declare that the Internet had “become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights.” Over the past few years, courts and parliaments in countries like France and Estonia have pronounced Internet access a human right.

But that argument, however well meaning, misses a larger point: technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it.

The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information — and those are not necessarily bound to any particular technology at any particular time. Indeed, even the United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring Internet access a human right, acknowledged that the Internet was valuable as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

What about the claim that Internet access is or should be a civil right? The same reasoning above can be applied here — Internet access is always just a tool for obtaining something else more important — though the argument that it is a civil right is, I concede, a stronger one than that it is a human right. Civil rights, after all, are different from human rights because they are conferred upon us by law, not intrinsic to us as human beings.

While the United States has never decreed that everyone has a “right” to a telephone, we have come close to this with the notion of “universal service” — the idea that telephone service (and electricity, and now broadband Internet) must be available even in the most remote regions of the country. When we accept this idea, we are edging into the idea of Internet access as a civil right, because ensuring access is a policy made by the government.

Yet all these philosophical arguments overlook a more fundamental issue: the responsibility of technology creators themselves to support human and civil rights. The Internet has introduced an enormously accessible and egalitarian platform for creating, sharing and obtaining information on a global scale. As a result, we have new ways to allow people to exercise their human and civil rights.

In this context, engineers have not only a tremendous obligation to empower users, but also an obligation to ensure the safety of users online. That means, for example, protecting users from specific harms like viruses and worms that silently invade their computers. Technologists should work toward this end.

It is engineers — and our professional associations and standards-setting bodies like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers — that create and maintain these new capabilities. As we seek to advance the state of the art in technology and its use in society, we must be conscious of our civil responsibilities in addition to our engineering expertise.

Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for the civil and human rights that deserve protection — without pretending that access itself is such a right.

Vinton G. Cerf of The New York Times (link here)

What analogy did the author employ to illustrate his argument? Do you agree with the author’s views that the Internet should not be considered a Human Right? 

Why do you think people are thinking about the Internet in this manner?