Creating a better world...

I would like to use this blog entry to make a commercial for the social network site of Couchsurfing. This is probably the webpage I adore the most on the internet, and one of the most important pages for me - a world without this page would for me simply mean another personal history and a poor world.

For the people who do not know this webpage I will briefly explain. Couchsurfing is an internet community for people who like to travel and meet new people - it connects the traveller with the local communities, as they write on their webpage. The thought is that everyone always have a spare couch/bed in their house/flat - and therefore can offer this to travellers visiting their local community. In this way the traveller lives for free and both the host and 'the surfer' of the couch meet new people and get a real cultural experience that can not be found in a hostel or a hotel. Furthermore Couchsurfing offers social groups where people can arrange meeting for a beer, going on trips together, arranging parties, ask about sightseeing, bond over common interests etc.

I have been a member of this webpage since 2008 and have travelled many places using this community... so far only with good experience. The page is different than a social network page like facebook. On couchsurfing it is about meeting new people - not keeping in contact with 'old' friends.



The slogan for this community is that couchsuring is creating a better world one couch at the time - and I really think that this is the case. My travels have never been the same after joining couchsurfing. I always feel like I get to know the culture much better, and I get friends all over the world, which is not a bad thing either (the map on the right shows the couchsurfers of this world). At the same time I get to reflect on my own identity and nationality quite a lot since Im being confronted with this all the time when meeting people from other countries or showing them my city or my country.

I am very happy that I live in a time where it is possible to travel in this manner - and Im not sure what I would do without this webpage. Being a foreigner in Slovenia this page is also quite helpfull for getting friends and keeping updated on what is going on in the city and the country.


Off course this community also has it flaws. First of all the webpage is not that user friendly, the design is ugly, and it takes some time to figure out how to navigate around it - also it often 'crashes'.


Second of all some people do not get the idea of couchsurfing - and therefore write 'dating-requests' to you... which you can off course just choose to ignore. It ruins the idea.
Finally I think that the architecture of the page also affects the behaviour of people using the webpage. It is quite specified what you can write about yourself and on top of this you also have to think a lot about what photos to post on your profile. Photos you put on facebook is different because people know you and will link your pictures to your actual identity... while people that do not know you will 'judge' you on your picture (or on what you write about yourself). Therefore there are a lot of thoughts about creating your profile and the 'identity' you think people would like to surf with or host.

What is left to say is - try it! Make the world a greater place by opening up your house and experiencing a new culture !

Thoughts on whether there was a 'facebook/twitter' revolution in the Middle East

What picture can capture the 2011-revolts in the Middle East and North Africa in the best fashion? Is there some picture that can clearest capture what is going on/what has been going on in Egypt, Tunesia, Bahrain and Lybia?

Peter Beaumont writes in his article from The Gurdian that it has very much been a young man or woman with a smart phone taking pictures of the revolts, of inequipped hospitals, of people being shot in the streets...!

Is the revolutions going on in the Middle East right now a 'twitter revolutions'? Revolutions where people use 'new media' to not only get information, but to also use information to fight political forces through pictures and words?

Or is this all made up by the Western media that tend to over estimate the use of new media?

”The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns” Michael Gladwell wrote in october 2010 in the New Yorker about the socalled Twitter revolution in Iran in 2009. He thinks that what happened in Iran in 2009 cannot be called a wtitter revolution, however. There was a twitter revolution made up by people in the West, who read tweets about what was going on in Iran - but all were in English. Gladwell asks if these tweets would not have been in Farsi if the Iranians were in fact using Twitter as part of the revolution...!

I will agree with him on this point. But also highlight that I think that when using the discourse of a 'twitter revolution' it covers more than just the webpage of Twitter. It includes all the use of new media and information. Here I think of the meaning of pictures (as I started this blog post with), also facebook seems to become more and more important. In Tunesia fx most social network pages were closed down - but not facebook. Facebook then became the way for people to get real' information that was not controlled by a state (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/25/twitter-facebook-uprisings-arab-libya)



Off course one can question whether it is a revolution when not everyone have access to computers, can read, etc. But I believe that just the fact that some people can get access to 'real information' and can forward information to others is what it takes for us to talk about a 'facebook'/'twitter' revolution. Their might have been a slight exaggeration of the meaning of these medias, but small things can lead to bigger things. Fx Al Jazeera has this past month shown quite a lot of these facebook - and youtube videos that people have been filming - which has not only lead the revolution to other parts of the Middle East, but also informed us in the West.

Some blogging about blocking

The Danish telecommunication providers have by ruling by the Danish supreme court been imposed to shut down the Danes access to the webpage "Pirate Bay".



With this official blocking of Pirate Bay, Denmark joins the club of Kuwait and China which are the only other countries that has banned this page.

I will not reflect on here whether it is right or not to use a page like this... but instead reflect on the notion of state's control over the internet. Is it OK for states to block the internet so that its citizens cannot use certain web pages?


In the current world it is not a new event that countries (like North Korea, China and Iran) blocks or bans certain parts of the internet. Not long ago Egypt also joined the club. But can we tolerate that these things happen in Western, democratic and modern states?

The reason for the Danish judgment on Pirate Bay was that it was a copyright infringment. But if this is the case isn't a judgment like this a glide towards more blocking? What will be next? When does a webpage entail enough copyright infringment material to be shut down? 40 %? 60 %? When is it OK to limit people's and webpage's right to free speech and free press? And what about people's right to freedom of information?

In the USA not long ago it was published by Wikileaks that the USA, a country that claims to be the most 'free' in the world, has made sure that Silicon Valley companies make 'back doors' in their software, so that the government have the option to spionage in what people write, comment on or publish online.

Is this democratic????

Or do we have to redifine the way we look upon the internet to make sure that democracy can keep existing?

I personally think that IF states cannot keep up with the way that their citizens use the internet and their 'new way' of getting access to informations and sources where they can speak or publish things freely (fx discussions fora... but also pirate bay!) - THEN there is something wrong.

We need more discussions on this subject, more education, more transparency....
The fact that Danish telecommunication providers has shut down access to Pirate Bay does not mean anything in practise, though. According to the Danish group of internet pirates (piratgruppen.org) it takes only 30 seconds to get around this 'block' and then access the page and download music, movies etc. Also people who wish to use Pirate Bay have a 1000 other options of web pages that offers downloading or streaming of movies and music more or less illegally (fx Spotify, grooveshark, isohunt ... )



Right now it seems that the internet has unlimited possibilities - and that states, even though they try, cannot fully keep up with these developments. But maybe they can - and then we must ask ourselves if we ever learned anything from George Owell's 1984?

Ore is 'BIGBROTHER' the answer in order to keep the citizens on a 'straight path'?