Day: 9 July 2006

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Environment Awareness

Given the current condition of our world everyone should be environmentally aware.

Here in Hong Kong the Discovery Asia channel is airing Earth Communication Organization (ECO) 1998 campaign, “Think”. The message of the campaign is simple and direct:

What if your family lived in a home on an island you couldn’t leave?
With limited amount of food and save drinking water
It would be very important to make things last wouldn’t it?
Especially when your family kept growing and growing… and growing
Well… it doesn’t matter where your home is
Because we all lived on an island we can’t leave [and they show the picture of the Earth floating in space]
So please only use what you need because supplies are truly limited
We can do that… [and the caption at the end is “Get involved”]

I think this video is very powerful and yet subtle. More people should see it.

The air condition of Hong Kong had deteriorated substantially in recent years and we, as citizens of Hong Kong, really need to help out to reverse or stop the situation as soon as possible.

One thing we can do is to begin to change all our utility bills and bank statements to online statements by registering with their respective services.

If you live in Hong Kong, to get you started I have listed the web sites of some of the Hong Kong utilities below:

Another thing you can do as citizens of Hong Kong and members of this planet is to join the “Lights Out Hong Kong” event. The organizers of this event are asking every person and companies to turn off the lights in their homes and businesses for 3 minutes on August, 8th, 2006 at 8:00pm.

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Are We All Paparazzi?

Now a days digital video and still cameras, and mobile phones capable of both are all around us, almost anyone can be a paparazzi. Is this a good thing for our society or is it something that is part of living in a metropolis in the 21st century?

There are sites like YouTube allowing amateur videographers to share their videos. With the Hong Kong video “Bus Uncle” being the most viewed video on YouTube last month (June).

There are also web sites and organizations like Videopower in Hong Kong that are independent videographers capturing the latest stories in Hong Kong using a different view point than commercial news broadcasts.

With so many readily media technologies in the hands of amateurs, many people are now raising the privacy issues of these media. I personally think that we must forego some personal privacy, when we (particularly in Hong Kong) lives in a place with over 7 million people in a territory smaller than the island of Manhattan, New York.

So if you are not doing something wrong you have nothing to worry about. If you are you should keep in mind that you may become the star of a video posted on YouTube or alike sites.

Having said that, like everything else, there are always bad apples in the mist. For amateur videographers and photocasters, there are ones who take hidden videos and photographs of others with sexual intentions and then post these media files onto the Internet. This is where I do agree that there is a violation of privacy to the extent of being illegal.

How do we draw the line? When does it consider invasion of privacy and when do we accept it as part of freedom of expression?

Please feel free to support your opinions.