In this month's Buzzing Around I thought I’d digress into the more serious side of the Internet, as a tool for communication, education and ramming home a few home truths.
Right, half of the people who have just read the above have clicked to the next page, they want games and reviews, well that’s fine, you can’t turn away forever.
After all this is an ezine dedicated to the Macintosh and with relations to the computer and technology that surround us on a daily basis.
 
Amongst the millions of game sites, corporate ‘we’ll sell you anything you don’t want, but give us your credit card number first’ sites, sites you only look at when your wife/girlfriend is on vacation and million upon millions of personal home pages I found something a little more important than the latest update to my printer driver [which I still haven’t found].
I’ll not use my ezine as a public platform, I don’t have the right. We live in a democracy so if you don’t like what I’m saying you just click away. BUT what if that choice was taken away from you, what would you do then? What if you went to tell me to my face and I kicked you in the chest, tied you up breathless, dragged you screaming into a dark room, locked the door, not to return for a day or two. No water, no food and no light. Not a nice thought, but people in less fortunate circumstances in countries without free speech or democracy are having the same and much worse done to them everyday - feel like clicking away again?
 
This leads me neatly to a site I stumbled across this month. Amnesty International is a worldwide campaigning movement that works to promote all the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international standards.
While there are some points you like I might not agree eye to eye with Amnesty, the main message is the same.
I’m not a member of Amnesty International nor before paid them much attention from my nice cozy world in a little town in the UK. But take a look at.........
http://www.amnesty.org/campaign/index.html
............and you start to think of what others have to put up with on a daily basis.
I’ll not press on at you to do anything else than look at what others have to live with day in day out, the power of the Internet lets you see the other side of life. Amnesty’s site is a simple enough affair letting the content speak for its self.
So remember, before you throw that floppy disk at the Wintel user sitting opposite you on the train, think someone somewhere might be having far worse done to them than just being inflicted as a Windows user.
There you go.
Next month I'll find the lighter side of life for you.
