Margot Wallstrom, VP of the EU, stirred up a mini firestorm on her blog post about Microsoft, Google and Yahoo censoring their operations in China. It’s actually a couple of weeks old, but the BBC picked it up today.

The comments are brutal. Open dialogue indeed.

For the last several months I’ve been meaning to write an article summarizing what I see as a historical cycle that has swung from everyone having a soapbox (early politics, pre-radio, pre-television), to a few big players having a megaphone (TV news producers, radio personalities), back to everyone having a soapbox with a megaphone via the web.

This phenomenon of everyone having a voice is having dramatic impacts on the culture, and since I still haven’t gotten around to writing about it, I am linking to the opening remarks by Doc Searls at Syndicate last week in SF, as he summarizes it well.

On one side is the Static Web of sites that we architect and build and construct, at locations with addresses. On the other is the Live Web of pages that we write or author and publish and syndicate, and which can be browsed or subscribed to.

…

Here’s the biggest fact about the live Web: individuals are in charge. The group we used to call consumers are now producers. The demand side is supplying itself. Dealing with that fact, and taking advantage of it, is the biggest challenge and opportunity for everybody who wants to succeed in the live Web.

Think about photography for a minute. Used to be we consumed film and processing and showed prints to a few friends and family members before they went in drawers or albums on shelves in our homes. Now we produce our own photography, publish it on Flickr or BuzzNet, tag it and share it with thousands or millions of people, in a form where it is interesting and useful and completely drives the whole photography business, far more, in the long run, than any brand, even Kodak, ever did.

So there is a new balance of power in the world, that we’re seeing first in the live Web. Now individuals are in charge of their own lives, their own livings, and the things they do in the world, many of which involve production of goods like we’ve never seen before.

That’s the new context.

(Via HorsePigCow)

For a really fascinating post on the future of the Internet, check out this lengthy discussion. (Via Mike)

UPDATE: Another related article from Macleans is here, discussing the revolution as it relates to media production.

This will come as shocking news to many, but Hurricane Katrina was not racist after all.

OR in SF writes:

black folks died in proportionally smaller numbers than whites. Quick stats are that black folks comprised 67% of the population but represented 59% of those who passed. White folks comprised 28% of the population but represented 36% of the deaths.

Everything you read about Katrina was wrong, and was, sorry, racist. An enormous amount of PR damage was done to the US, and race tensions were fanned without any factual basis. Will the MSM address this?

Brothers Judd wonders why Bush hates rich white people.

Keith Milby adds: ” It appears that extensive damage might just now be coming to the surface that was done by the media coverage and that same coverage now seems to be causing damage to the media.”

Ed Driscoll, responding to Glenn’s call for an investigation, says “What a slam dunk that would be for Republicans. And it’ll never happen: they don’t call ‘em the Stupid Party for nothing.”

Read President Bush’s speech on Iraq here. In case you missed it, the speech is worth reading.

Captain Ed quotes Harry Reid, complaining about the vote on the defense bill.

We’ve become like the House of Commons. Whoever has the most votes wins. It hasn’t worked that way in 216 years.

Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway “IT” scooter, has yet another invention on the table. Hopefully it will be a bit more successful, but it still makes you go “eeeew…”

he’s building a dirt cheap box that solves the problem [of unpotable drinking water] and that can be distributed all over the world. Said Kamen about how to make it work: “Just add water.” According to Kamen’s co-workers, the device even works with urine. “If it has water in it, we can get drinking water from it,” one of them said.