September 2007


This is by far the coolest thing I’ve ever done in Beijing…

One Shot Beijing

One Shot Beijing

A little more than two years ago I visited my very dear friend Alex in New York and we came up with the idea of bringing One Shot to Beijing. After finding the right partners, it has finally come to pass!! If you’re in town, stop by and get a free portrait taken that will develop into a community-wide portrait of Beijing.

More info here.

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A couple of months after access to Wikipedia was miraculously granted, we are Wikiless once more behind the Great Firewall of China. Every time this happens, I just have to ask myself, “Why? What is the point of all this?”

Well, obviously, the point is that if you control the flow of information, you can better predict and manage the behavior of the population. The population does seem to provide plenty of corroborating evidence to support the fact they do indeed benefit on the whole from management. Telling everyone how to behave, what to believe, is easy. Inspirational stories abound. You just need to twist the tales at the end to support whatever cause you are pushing, and the masses will fall for it hook, line and sinker.

The next step is to eliminate anything else that doesn’t fit into the grand vision, because that would would add entropy to the system, which can only lead to instability. When faced with the task of governance, lets face it, simple is good. Tell people what you want them to hear. Block everything else. Harmony. It really is quite rationally thought out.

Unless, of course, you subscribe to the school of thought that people would be better off managing themselves. It does take a huge leap of faith in mankind to believe that individuals can actually make sound decisions on important issues that affect not only their lives, but the lives of everyone else in the community. To someone in power, it must even be somewhat frightening to know that if they can manage themselves, they might manage you away.

Its important to provide plenty of distractions, educating people toward the right decisions to be made, offering rewards for proper decision making, such as the nice house, the nice car, all of those neat gadgets, the respect and admiration of society. Prod decision making all day long by showing non-stop commercials everywhere, even in the elevators. Especially in the elevators. Everything front of mind, the brain is saturated with good decisions that have already been made, again and again, without the decision maker even being the slightest bit aware that nearly every decision throughout their day has already been made for them.

Except for those who do stop and question. Who resist the mold. Who like to make up their own minds.

If left with a choice, you, the governing power, can either give the free thinkers access to everything, or at least enough of the good stuff to allow them to believe they actually know the truth, and concentrate your efforts on snowballing the majority of the population so that no one will ever even think of listening to those kook balls who keep telling them the sky is falling (US model) or you can attempt to maintain a moral and just society by preventing people from accessing materials which might cause disharmony in society, while mass hypnotizing everyone with consumer hysteria (Chinese model).

I don’t know which is worse, but I do miss my Wikipedia.

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