Are the geeks still beating their chests?

David Heath
Monday, 25 January 2010 16:48

Opinion and Analysis

We're about to experience another round of geek protest.  What will it prove?

Earlier today my fellow iTWire writer Stephen Withers reported of a campaign to place a "black-out" pop-up page over 500 Australian-based web pages in protest against the Federal Government's Internet Filter proposal.

Nearly a month ago, I described how doing geeky things to convince the general public to oppose the filter was a rather pointless exercise; something akin to "preaching to the choir" or explaining Einstein's theory of relativity to your grandmother; thoughts echoing those of Josh Mehlman.

As another iTWire author wrote in comment to Stephen's article, according to a recent survey there are over 200 million websites on the Internet.  Even by making the reasonably conservative claim that one site in 2000 on the Internet was Australian, one could suggest that there are perhaps 100,000 Australian sites. 

Of those, just 500 are planning to host the black-out banner.  One could reasonably argue that's about three-fifths of five-eights of not very much at all!

Worse, one could also probably argue that a great number of sites hosting the pop-up are geek-only sites.  I'd hardly expect Google.com.au or NineMSN.com.au or even abc.net.au (or any other of the top 100 Australian sites) to get involved.

This is NOT the way to engage the voting public, in fact I'd expect the majority of responses from the average man-in-the-street to vary somewhere between 'huh?' and meh!'

We have to engage in a conversation with the general public, not continue to shout at them.  So, as I started this piece, what will it prove?  The answer unfortunately is very little.