Blogging and responsibility...

How I wish more and more people of my generation get to know cyberspace and the wonder of been in cyberspere, a new world altogether..The internet make this possible. According to recent estimate there are about ten million bloggers around the world today and in Malaysia there are about ten thousand, mostly young bloggers...Folks of my generation should take to blogging and put their thoughts for the world to read... We are a generation that start lives in a sorts of a dark age...Where the tools of communication are non existence...I told the bloggers at the PPS bash the other day that I grew up in the forties in a world that is only about ten kilometer radius, there were no telephone, no electricity, no running water and the only way to communicate is by word of mouth and by writing letter but then at that period of our history most of the adult are illiterate...To get message across one had to walk for kilometers, miles then or through the community centre such as the mosque, Surau, church or other religion centers...The authority then had their means, that is by using the Mobil unit of the information Department, that would use loud speaker to inform people of certain news from time to time and when the authority need to do a mass information do, they would organized an open air film show at the local common or Padang...Movie would be screen and there would be crowd watching...It is during the intermission that whatever message are disseminate to the people in one go.....It is a very effective method indeed...It works well then but I doubt that it would works now... In the past it is not possible for the thoughts of the ordinary people be disseminated to the public at large...Especially in countries where there are control free press and to a certain extend there are no real freedom of speech...So in a way blogging is a sort of an opportunity for the ordinary folks to put their thoughts in writing and then exposed it to the whole wide world for others to read...In a way it is a sort of a silent revolution in the freedom of speech...For Malaysian who are used to a guided free press of a sorts, blogging became a tool for the expression of free speech....Remember since time immemorial man have always wanted to have the right to their own thoughts and today with the internet , blogging has became one of the tool for doing so...Like any tools, in the right hand it would be good but in the wrong hand it would be otherwise...But then it is always difficult to say which is right and which is wrong, so in order to contribute well, like having and using any tools, whoever blog had to be responsible for what they write, for in whatever endeavors it came with a cost, in this case being responsible for what you write...For in any social engineering venture, the human cost is greater if the project create more damage then good...So to all blogger my advise is that be responsible in blogging and do as much good as possible so that the future of the society and mankind are assured and we may continue to live in peace, harmony and a prosperous life...Especially so in our country Malaysia...So here where the elder bloggers or the Pak Blogger could play an effective role in the ever changing social environment...We are a generation who have seen the good and bad of information and the result of the freedom of speech...The thirteen may incident in nineteen sixty nine is a very good example...The country was almost destroyed but then because of the great leadership we have had then, the country was saved and today we prosper because of the action taken by these early leaders, who introduce new regulations that somewhat seen as curtailing our freedom of speech..All these should be seen as a step forward on a difficult journey of nationhood, in a country that is multi racial, multi religious, multi languages, where culture at time seem to clash...We Malaysian must try to understand that it took those countries in the first world thousand of years to be what they are now, lest we forget that we are just but only forty seven years... A young nation indeed...But then we, on the other side should not be complacent or contented for what we have achieved, especially in the freedom of speech....We need more and for that we must try to take one small step a time and move forward but with caution, for to succeed in whatever venture in social engineering, one had to act smart...And blogging smart and with responsibility is the way to go... So to all the Pak Bloggers [term introduce by Derumo] do continue to blog and introduce our peer to blogging...The thoughts of people of our generation would surely make a difference in the blogging world and the freedom of speech in our country....To all those young bloggers in Malaysia, carry on, blog with love and care, for your thoughts would in some small way would help to shape the future of Malaysia...To lc teh, welcome to the blogging world... Have a nice day....