Theodore Webb's Blog Migrated

I've migrated my blog. It can now be found here at http://www.theodorewebb.com/index.html. (Note: Simply typing theodorewebb.com seems show up fine on Chrome and Explorer, but for some reason on Firefox, you need to type in http://www.theodorewebb.com/index.html for it to show up properly. Not sure why, but trying to fix it...) I'm sure I'll be making adjustments to its appearance in the future, but will try to keep it here at this Web address.

My blog was initially on Blogger (.blogspot) run by Google. I'd written three blog posts there. But then I wrote a blog post that discussed how my fictional characters in "The STARLING Series" are forced to "hack" into the SUPERNET in the year 2045 so they can exercise their right of free speech.

The key word here is "forced." These fictional characters are forced to "hack" because they have no other choice in a society that tightly controls SUPERNET. Again it's a FICTIONAL book.

Turns out that apparently you can't use the word "hack" in any post under any circumstances whether it's in a discussion of questions and issues about what "hacking" means, or whether you're discussing a work of FICTION or not.

If you post constant pictures of kittens (and yes, we do love kittens) on Blogger, then you'll probably be OK.

But if you want to talk about issues, then good luck.

From my preliminary Internet research, turns out blogs getting automatically deleted in Blogger with no explanation or contact or recourse is pretty common. Google's policing algorithms are very strict and will immediately shut down your blog with no warning whatsoever.

Obviously, since I've written a fiction book about teenage "hackers" set in the year 2045, a blog service that so severely restricts which words you can and can not use is not going to work for me, nor do I suspect it will work for many other people.

It's interesting that when you sign up for Blogger, it touts its "support of free speech." Really?

While it's true Blogger/Google has now apparently un-deleted my blog, the blog was down/deleted from Dec. 1-6. That's too long to have a blog down.

To be fair, I can somewhat understand the global pressure that is put on Google to police its site. But that's the core of the problem, isn't it? This is the exact issue I'm writing about in my books: free speech and how easily it can be censored, controlled, manipulated and ultimately destroyed in the digital age. It's common knowledge (news sources) Google has in the past bent over backward to censor its service so it could access the vast market in China. That was one thing that always disturbed me about these enormous global corporations: How quickly they can trade away essential core values we hold as Americans, values which are a common dream among people in the world. For example, there's the issue of Google.cn (Google China, which now redirects to http://www.google.com.hk). With Google.cn, the Tiananmen Square protests have been blocked (censorship).

To protect its users (and to walk the walk instead of talking the talk), companies like Google should have a well-informed human being review a blog before it's automatically shut down. But of course, it's so much cheaper to just have a computer automatically delete blogs. The Google policy appears to be: Shut it down first and ask questions later. Seems it should be the other way around.

This issue of computers replacing human beings actually features quite prominently in "The STARLING Series." In the first four books, computers have replaced an enormous number of jobs that humans once did, including driving and piloting drones. But as my book explains and as the shutdown of my blog on Blogger indicates, a computer doesn't have the human dimension of spirit, the deepest, most true capabilities of natural conscious human thought, to make the correct decision.