"In vain we scream, in vain shout, and try our best to find out..."
Last week I listened to the previous Friday's (3 February) edition of NPR's On the Media radio programme, originated from WNYC-FM in New York City; Boing-Boing co-editor, polyglot, former publishing veep and current tech reporter extraordinaire Xeni Jardin substituted for OtM's regular female anchor (and managing editor), Brooke Gladstone.
Ms. Jardin reported the second lead story in this episode ("Net Loss"), which was a sidebar to the main story (the furore in the Muslim world over allegedly disrespectful cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad which originally appeared in a Danish newspaper last September, and have since been reprinted in various other European papers; strictly speaking, even respectful depictions of Muhammad are verboten, as are depictions of any living creature, especially humans; it should be remembered that Allah commanded the angels to worship the first man, which raises several intriguing questions as to the seraphimic hierarchy in Islam...); this piece consisted of Ms. Jardin interviewing New Republic columnist Joseph Braude, who wrote on TNR Online on Friday, 20 January (the article, also titled "Net Loss," is only available to subscribers of The New Republic) how he disagreed with the rosy predictions of various pundits that the the Internet will, ultimately, bring peace, love and something like a Western liberal democracy to Iran, owing to the huge number of Iranian bloggers (OtM gives the figure of 100,000 Iranian bloggers, but Mr. Braude stated that he's seen the number pegged at 700,000 globally; Iran's estimated population last year was slightly more than 68 million). In a nutshell, Mr. Braude feels that the Iranian government is rather shrewdly allowing just enough fun stuff to trickle through on the Net that their citizens see to serve as a safety valve: let 'em screw around with just enough of their music, movies, co-ed chat rooms, and titillating glimpses of the sinkholes of decadence and moral iniquity that comprise the Western world, and they probably won't get arsed enough to toss you out of office, is apparently the government's reasoned assessment.
All very well and good, but that's not what made my ears prick up.
No, what made me sit up and take notice was the casual assertion in Ms. Jardin's intro that "Stanford researchers say that Persian [Farsi] is now the third most common language on the Internet."
Not Russian. Not Arabic. Not Spanish, Hindi, or Japanese. Farsi.
All I can say to that is, "Who'd'a thought..?" And "Tajoob!"
Ms. Jardin reported the second lead story in this episode ("Net Loss"), which was a sidebar to the main story (the furore in the Muslim world over allegedly disrespectful cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad which originally appeared in a Danish newspaper last September, and have since been reprinted in various other European papers; strictly speaking, even respectful depictions of Muhammad are verboten, as are depictions of any living creature, especially humans; it should be remembered that Allah commanded the angels to worship the first man, which raises several intriguing questions as to the seraphimic hierarchy in Islam...); this piece consisted of Ms. Jardin interviewing New Republic columnist Joseph Braude, who wrote on TNR Online on Friday, 20 January (the article, also titled "Net Loss," is only available to subscribers of The New Republic) how he disagreed with the rosy predictions of various pundits that the the Internet will, ultimately, bring peace, love and something like a Western liberal democracy to Iran, owing to the huge number of Iranian bloggers (OtM gives the figure of 100,000 Iranian bloggers, but Mr. Braude stated that he's seen the number pegged at 700,000 globally; Iran's estimated population last year was slightly more than 68 million). In a nutshell, Mr. Braude feels that the Iranian government is rather shrewdly allowing just enough fun stuff to trickle through on the Net that their citizens see to serve as a safety valve: let 'em screw around with just enough of their music, movies, co-ed chat rooms, and titillating glimpses of the sinkholes of decadence and moral iniquity that comprise the Western world, and they probably won't get arsed enough to toss you out of office, is apparently the government's reasoned assessment.
All very well and good, but that's not what made my ears prick up.
No, what made me sit up and take notice was the casual assertion in Ms. Jardin's intro that "Stanford researchers say that Persian [Farsi] is now the third most common language on the Internet."
Not Russian. Not Arabic. Not Spanish, Hindi, or Japanese. Farsi.
All I can say to that is, "Who'd'a thought..?" And "Tajoob!"