Welcome to the Blogger’s Manifesto blog. Here I have collected sources and links that I relied on in writing The Blogger’s Manifesto, published by Anthem Press in 2007. Please click and explore. If you are an afficionado of academic gossip check out the LSE file.
If you are interested in reading the book, you can get it here:
yours always,
Erik
Only today did I learn something pretty shocking: in the spring of 2006, when I was having my controversy with the LSE authorities, someone from the LSE called my prospective employer, NCTU here in Taiwan, and warned them about me. “He is angry, he is crazy, he is impossible to work with.” Isn’t that unbelievable! Clearly the LSE administration was trying to make sure that I wouldn’t get myself another job.
My NCTU colleague told this story only today: “It’s funny,” she said laughing. “After that phone call we didn’t really know what to believe. We took another look at your photo and some of us decided that you looked like a real trouble-maker. Some others, however, thought we should give you a chance.” “None of us expected we’d get such a gentle and friendly person.”
“I have an issue with authority,” I said. “I don’t like it when people exercise power over me.”
“A lot of sociologists are the same,” said my colleague. “They want to stand up to authority.” “We are very happy you are here.”
Matt Frei, the BBC North America correspondent has an interesting program about blogs in the US (from my friend Paolo):
I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake as far as this case is concerned (I don’t read British papers regularly anymore …). A British woman, Samina Malik, has just been convicted of thinking thoughts which aren’t allowed in contemporary BrItain (yes, she’s Muslim, yes, she posted it on the web).
More here:
These are some comments:
Her only crime, as far as I can see, is that her poetry was so crap. What we need more of is good terrorist poetry. Let the poetic hand grenades fly!
The following is a very bloody example of terrorist poetry. A poem that advocates the destruction of an entire British town:
Yes, indeed. The book is now available from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. Buy it today — it’s only $8.76 or 2.75 pounds. What a bargain!
My blog, “Forget the Footnotes“, is what got me into trouble with my university, the London School of Economics and Political Science. Read and ponder. More about me here.
The posts below contain the collection of sources, links and articles which I relied on in writing the book. Connoisseurs of academic gossip should check out the “LSE File” collection of emails and documents. If you are looking for something, please use the search window to the right.
Since this project now is concluded, I’m no longer updating this page. I am, however, still reading comments, so please leave one. My current blog, “Too Many Mangoes,” is here.
yours ever,
Erik
I got the book today, my very own hard-copy! I’m really very happy with it. Anthem did a great job. I like the cover a lot, and the feel of the book in my hand. OK, it’s kind of a slight volume, but some things are best said succinctly.
The book is clearly quite pick-up-able. It was laying around on a table at home today and my daughter Saga, 12, picked it up and started reading. That never happened before with any of my books. After browsing a couple of pages she turned to me and asked: “Pappa, are you going to go back to writing boring books again after this one?” Out of the mouths of babes!
Actually even my wife picked up the book, quite unprompted, and began reading. That too is a first.
Will I go back to writing boring books after this one? You bet.
“Things You Didn’t Know about Facebook” is a new Facebook group that is very sceptical of some of the business practices of Mark Zuckerberg et al (from my friend Leda). Did you know that …
This Western blogger in Shanghai got into serious trouble for writing about how to pick up and have sex with Chinese women. Apparently he was ruining their lives and making it impossible for them to find a future husband. Poor them. His blog is here:
Here are some comments:
This is a neat little web page that allows you to make comparisons of Google search results in different countries:
Hmmm… I wonder if the search results for “falun gong” are any different in Mainland China and Taiwan …
Five prominent American academics have declared themselves “fed up” with “aggressive incursion of partisan politics into universities’ hiring and tenure practices,” and issued a call to “defend academic freedom.” The story is here:
This is a representative quote:
“In recent years, universities across the country have been targeted by outside groups seeking to influence what is taught and who can teach. To achieve their political agendas, these groups have defamed scholars, pressured administrators, and tried to bypass or subvert established procedures of academic governance,” the statement says. “As a consequence, faculty have been denied jobs or tenure, and scholars have been denied public platforms from which to share their viewpoints. This violates an important principle of scholarship, the free exchange of ideas, subjecting them to ideological and political tests. These attacks threaten academic freedom and the core mission of institutions of higher education in a democratic society.”
Obviously much of the context here is the Middle East and the activities of the pro-Israel lobby, but academic freedom is under threat everywhere, not least from market forces. The price of freedom is, as always, eternal vigilance.
This is a web page showing videos of a beautiful Chinese girl dressed in a cocktail dress and high-heels stomping little kittens to death. I wish I had thought of that! Is it for real or maybe just an ad for high-heel shoes? Judge for yourselves:
In my class on freedom of speech on the internet I gave my students the assignment to link to a web site that they think should be banned. All in all they are a lot more prudish than I am (or at least they pretend to be). One student had a very nice discussion of the pros and cons of being confronted with material that is truly alien:
culture shock happens to people when they contact a new and unfamiliar “world. internet just easily brings everything into people’s lives without any permission. so there got a problem. different culture brings different concepts, different positions. it challenges us to face people with different thoughts.”
This is the list of sites they came up with:
Read the rest of this entry »
Bad news from Italy (from my friend Sal): in the country with the most oligopolistic media structure in Europe, blogs are now going to be restricted by law. And this isn’t even Berlusconi’s idea, but Prodi’s:
The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money.
As Beppe Grillo comments:
“Blogs are being born every second, anyone can start one without a problem and they can write their thoughts, publish photos and videos. In fact, the route proposed by Levi limits access to the Internet. What young person is going to submit to all these hoops to do a blog? The Levi-Prodi law obliges anyone who has a website or a blog to get a publishing company and to have a journalist who is on the register of professionals as the responsible director.”
Interesting review (from my friend Martin) of a recent report on blogging and journalistic ethics:
Here is a representative quote:
“Who is a journalist and who is not? The reporter or commentator who acts acts like he was a godly authority still exists to be sure but he no longer has the same elevated position. People have grown tired of the traditional journalist and his supposedly objective monologue. The consumers of media don’t what to be talked to but have come to see the journalistic product as a part of an ongoing dialog.”
The publisher of the book, Anthem, only now discovered that it’s possible to download the entire text online. Funny, I told them months ago. Maybe they were too busy reading books to notice? No, they’re not ordering me to take the downloads down, just politely asking whether I think it would hurt sales. Would it?
Sales surely won’t be hurt. What’s a stack of A4s compared to a nice book with a pretty cover? (provided it’s cheap enough),
This is a very interesting story about secrecy in the EU, Sweden and the bio-tech company Monsanto (from my friend Fatosh). Apparently the Monsanto people want to keep information secret which according to Swedish law must be made publicly available. The EU is initiating legal action against the Swedes:
At the time of Sweden’s EU application — in the early 1990s — there was a lot of talk of Sweden as a leaky pipe where the secrets of the EU would come pouring out. Not nearly enough has happened so far. Leak, baby, leak! (You don’t have to be a Swede to believe in freedom of information but it probably helps …)
These are some of the places on the web where my book has been mentioned:
This is another flabbergasting case of private censorship by a UK internet provider (from my friend Dave):
Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, has a blog where he discusses human rights abuses in Central Asia. The local maffia businessman, Alisher Usmanov — who in addition to his other crimes owns 15 percent of Arsenal football club — objected to some of the things that Murray wrote and convinced the UK-based web host, Fastnet, to pull the plug on the blog (and in the process taking down a number of other blogs, including that of Boris Johnson, the mayor-wannabe of London).
More stories here:
Meanwhile, Craig Murray’s main web page is accessible here.
When will private UK/US web hosts ever stop taking orders from plutocrats and authoritarian rulers? Bloggers in democratic countries — and our freedom to speak — need better protection.
My friend Chi-Pen suggested we’d try to get a Chinese edition out of The Manifesto. Now that’s a cool idea. There is a lot of interest in the internet and blogging in China. Embarassingly, they’ll be keen to hear that Western countries too — and UK universities — have problems with freedom of speech!
I can already hear the cheery “ho, ho, ho” of Mr Amazon as he is approaching with his book bag. Only a few more days to go.
Dear Customer,
We wanted to give you an update on the status of your order. Unfortunately, the release date for the item(s) listed below was changed by the supplier, and we need to provide you with a new estimated delivery date based on the new release date:
- Erik Ringmar (Author) “A Blogger’s Manifesto” [Paperback]
Estimated arrival date: 08/10/07 - 09/10/07. We are sorry for any inconvenience this causes.
Actually the latest word from the publisher is that the book will be out on October 15th. We’ll be spending next week preparing the marketing effort.
The LSE’s Dept of Government now has a “students diary blog.” Ha, ha, ha, ha! That’s the funniest things I’ve heard all day. Ha, ha, ha, ha.
When will they ever learn? Official web pages, like those of a university, just can’t blog. It’s not believable. And this is for exactly the same reason that white middle-age politicians shouldn’t wear baseball caps turned backward then talking to members of ethnic minorities. You’re only showing how utterly out of touch you are.
OK, let me give you a suggestion (because I’m a nice guy): why doesn’t the Govt Dept start a web forum where students can ask questions to staff? In addition, why doesn’t the Convenor start his own blog? This would be genuinely interesting for students to read (especially if the convenor in question reveals himself to be half-way literate).
This is a blogger involved in the current popular uprising in Burma (from my friend Simon):
Perhaps surprisingly in one of the world’s poorest countries, blogging appears to play an important role — both as a way of documenting the activities of the popular movement and as a way of coordinating them.
This is a BBC story on the topic (also from Simon):
Oct 11 update: the Burmese gov’t is cracking down on communication networks:
The latest issue of the New York Review of Books has a review by Michael Tomasky of Al Gore’s The Assault on Reaon. Apparently the book concludes as an ode to blogging:
In his concluding chapter, Gore places his hopes in the Internet as the source of a new civic forum with the potential to change the way we talk to one another. … In Gore’s view:
“Generally speaking, bloggers are concerned citizens who want to share their ideas and opinions with the rest of the public. Some have genuinely interesting things to say, while others do not, but what is most significant about blogging may be the process itself. By posting their ideas online, bloggers are reclaiming the tradition of our Founders of making their reflections on the national state of affairs publicly available.”
Maybe I should have asked Gore to write a preface to my book? Or at least a friendly back-cover quote? (No, Al Gore did NOT invent the internet).
This is a tale of mirth and woe which recounts the time Scaryduck tried to buy a couch (link from my friend Dave). Great example of consumer empowerment.
Yes, he is blogging this.
Work on the book is now finished — covers, blurbs, etc are all done, done, donissimo. I’m really happy with the final result. Anthem Press did a good job in the end. Let’s now see what everyone else thinks. Early copies should be released at the beginning of October and the book should be out in shops and on Amazon by mid October.
I hate it when my books grow up and leave home. Sob. I feel so lonely.
This is a funny Guardian article from January of this year referring to the “naughty Erik Ringmar.” “Naughty”? Me? (Too bad I didn’t notice it when it first appeared, it would have cheered me up):
Remember naughty Erik Ringmar, who warned sixth-formers that rather than apply to the London School of Economics, his employer at the time, they should go for the rather less prestigious London Metropolitan University? Now the government lecturer has told undergraduates on no account to enrol for a PhD. “Don’t do it!” he writes on his blog. “There are a million other ways to spend your life which are more rewarding, both personally and financially … When you turn 32, your friends will start to make megabucks while you still struggle to get money for a bus pass. You might not like what the PhD turns you into, or your girl/boyfriend might not like it. In fact, halfway through, he/she is likely to leave you.”
Not very accurate reporting of what I actually said of course, but pretty funny nonetheless.
This is the Queen of Sky, one of the more famous doocees, explaining herself on American cable TV:
This semester I’m giving a course at NCTU on “freedom of speech and censorship in the age of the internet.” As always there is a lot of working setting up a new course, but it’s also great fun. Yes, the course is very much based on my book and on my LSE experience. Unfortunately you can’t enrol in the course unless you’re an NCTU student, but you can certaintainly check out the Moodle reading list (with lots of nice links):
Any comments on the course would be much appreciated. Is it stupid to assign Kant’s “What Is Enlightenment?” Is it off-topic? Too difficult?
When I joined Facebook last year I was amazed to find that there were some 12,000 LSE students — present and past — on the site and not a single member of the LSE staff. This, however, is now changing. Yesterday I got a cheerful Facebook message from Rosie Gosling, director of the external program at LSE. Hi Rosie! Who says you can’t teach old dogs new tricks?
Of course there aren’t any full-time LSE academics on Facebook yet. That’ll be the day.