Seeing Americans companies take sides in the politics of foreign countries in such enthusiastic, carefree ways leaves me feeling very uneasy.
Let's just remember that taking sides = enabling free speech in this case.
Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
51–60 of 111 posts
Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
take a look at the names of authors of the blog post: Posted by Ujjwal Singh, CoFounder of SayNow and AbdelKarim Mardini, Product Manager, Middle East & North Africa
The names are of South Asian origin, are they not? I don't know what I am meant to infer from them.
Singh certainly is. Abdelkarim Mardini appears to be an Arabic name and may very well be Egyptian.
Wait, yes, he's Egyptian: http://www.google.com/profiles/ak.mardini?hl=en
Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
#53Some amazing stuff on there. This message brings a tear to my eye. http://www.saynow.com/playMsg.html?ak=TkxFNENGTHVQQzdTdVE4N0...
Yeah, that one got me too.
Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I'm surprised google isn't doing speech recognition and translating these for us too." It's because speech recognition does not exist for Egyptian Arabic. There are some research programs, but no actual completed products. This may be surprising to some, but speech recognition is only available in a small number of languages. Mainly European languages plus Chinese. There is nothing preventing speech recognition in o…
The language Egyptians speak is Arabic. Voice recognition software for that language does exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAKHR_Software_Company#Speech_R...
All Arabic is not the same, it's not always even interunderstandable so it's important to distinguish which dialect you are referring to.
But I did not not know about them, and I did search. Perhaps Google doesn't either.
Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
#55Seeing Americans companies take sides in the politics of foreign countries in such enthusiastic, carefree ways leaves me feeling very uneasy.
To my knowledge it doesn't come with a censorship mechanism that prevents pro-government tweets.
The purpose of the system is to circumvent the government's control over communication, so it is inherently anti-government.
Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
To my knowledge it doesn't come with a censorship mechanism that prevents pro-government tweets.
The purpose of the system is to circumvent the government's control over communication, so it is inherently anti-government.
This same argument applies to two cans and a piece of string.
Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree in principle, but in this case there's one side attempting to cut off all uncontrolled communication in and out of the country. It seems like an easy choice to side against their position on communication.
What if the revolution is successful but the current government is replaced with something far worse? Would you want to be part of a company that encouraged that?
Yes, let's support brutal dictatorships on the off-chance that a revolution might result in an even more brutal dictatorship.
Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree in principle, but in this case there's one side attempting to cut off all uncontrolled communication in and out of the country. It seems like an easy choice to side against their position on communication.
What if the revolution is successful but the current government is replaced with something far worse? Would you want to be part of a company that encouraged that?
A future government might or might not be worse, we can't tell. Supporting the current revolution and encouraging its future development into something far worse are separate issues until the revolution actually accomplishes something.
Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
#59Seeing Americans companies take sides in the politics of foreign countries in such enthusiastic, carefree ways leaves me feeling very uneasy.
Why?
We don't know what is going on in Egypt other than sound bites from CNN. It's our flavor of the month. We don't have anything invested in the country, and don't have to deal with the consequences of any of our actions there. Considering all that, is it ethical for us to get involved?
Ultimately, this system is an interesting use of technology and makes for good infotainment. I have doubts to the extent which social networking impacts peoples lives in or moves events in Egypt. I see it as a cheap and easy way for news agencies to relate international news back to our lives in the west, possibly to make news stories more commercially viable.
I just don't like the precedents of companies taking activist roles in foreign countries.
Re: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
The names are of South Asian origin, are they not? I don't know what I am meant to infer from them.
Singh certainly is. Abdelkarim Mardini appears to be an Arabic name and may very well be Egyptian. Wait, yes, he's Egyptian: http://www.google.com/profiles/ak.mardini?hl=en
Ok... Can you connect the dots for me? I still don't see what I should be taking away from that. I'm sure that there is a whole spectrum of political opinion in Egypt, as there is in the USA, of which Mardini represents a single point.