6 Responses to “Brad Lauster”  

1. 1 Mojan Movassate on Jul 21st, 2003 said:

   speaking of blogs…i ran across this article in the midst my research and thought i’d share (sorry, wall street journal is only open to subscribers so i had to copy and paste)

   The Blog Shall Make You Free

   429 words
   18 July 2003
   The Wall Street Journal
   A8
   English
   (Copyright (c) 2003, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

   The story of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi, who Iran has finally admitted died from brain injuries sustained when Iranian secret police beat her, made international news this week. More surprising is that Westerners are hearing about Iranian journalist Sina Motallebi, arrested for the crime of blogging.

   Technology has played a huge role in modern democracy movements, whether it was faxes during the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, or e-mail during the Russian overthrow of its dictators. Iran, for its part, has discovered blogs. In less than two years an estimated 10,000 blogs have popped up under the very noses of mullahs, mostly written in Persian, and all of them giving Iranians a new free-speech outlet.

   Thanks to these blogs, Iranians are gabbing fairly freely about everything from entertainment and poetry to technology and personal diaries. Iranian women (who can take different names online) use blogs to talk about dating, sex and other taboo subjects. And, of course, the blogs are playing a real role in Iran’s democracy movement. Bloggers provide firsthand accounts of student protests, political criticism and even attract politicians — who comment on postings.

   Iran’s mullahs might be slow but they’re catching on. They have started blocking sites they deem subversive (including Voice of America’s Persian-language site) and have occasionally shut down student sites and blog-hosting services like persianblog.com. They also decided to make an example of Mr. Motallebi. A journalist for a paper that was shut down by the government, Mr. Motallebi began a blog. His site, while rarely political, was very popular. In April he was arrested on undisclosed charges, and is now awaiting trial.

   That Westerners know about Mr. Motallebi is largely the result of another blogging phenomenon: Iranians who run English-language blogs outside of Iran. Pedram Moallemian, born in Iran but now living in California, runs a blog (www.eyeranian.net) and started an online petition to protest Mr. Motallebi’s arrest. Hossein Derakhshan, who runs a Iran-focused blog (www.hoder.com) in Canada, helped bring the story to the attention of well-known blogs like InstaPundit and Buzz Machine, which means a lot of Americans now know the story. Mr. Derakhshan has also provided Iranians back home with the technical information to set up blogs.

   The Internet won’t bring down Iran’s dictators. But the blogging phenomenon shows that human freedom and expression will not be denied, and that technology will only continue to make the job of dictators that much harder.

2. 2 Kyle Doerksen on Jul 21st, 2003 said:

   Maybe ISIS will bring down some dictators someday…

   Looks like Brad’s reading “Experience Economy” too. Sounds like the kind of guy we want to get in on the project.

3. 3 Kyle Doerksen on Jul 21st, 2003 said:

   If you check out Bo Cowgill’s website, there’s a section of the left sidebar with other Stanford Bloggers. These might be good people to talk to about groups@stanford as well.

4. 4 Brad Lauster on Jul 21st, 2003 said:

   Hi! I also have a list of Stanford bloggers that’d I’d be willing to share. It’s basically Bo’s list, plus a few additional people.

   I’d love to hear about what you’re working on. Shoot me an email if you’d like to get together sometime.

5. 5 Bob on Jul 23rd, 2003 said:

   Did you guys contact Brad at all? We shouldn’t leave him entirely in the dark after password-protecting him out…

6. 6 Kyle Doerksen on Jul 24th, 2003 said:

   Yeah, we had a meeting with Brad the other day. Sounds like he’ll be a great guy to work with in ITSS. He’s redesigning webmail, heading up the blog project and working on the Steltor->Oracle->Whatever campus-wide calendaring initative. He’s also an avid Mac fan, blogger and generally cool guy. He also has the password to this blog, so watch out ;)

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