I sincerely hope that all of you are familiar with the Nobel Prize, more specifically the Nobel Peace Prize. This is awarded annually to the person(s) who have, to quote Alfred Nobel's final Will & Testament, "who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
So, as we have seen in history there have been some very deserving candidates, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, President Woodrow Wilson, UNHCR, Mother Theresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan and so on. It can truly be said to be the most coveted award known to man.
However recently its integrity of late has been highly questionable. Of course there is the glaring omission of Mahatma Ghandi, despite 5 nominations. The year Ghandi died, there was no prize awarded, as "there was no suitable living candidate." Of course it must be noted that there is a rule that no person may receive a Nobel Prize posthumously. This rule was bent in the case of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, who was nominated while alive, but passed away before the award was given. Not to take from Secretary General Hammarskjöld's work, for he truly deserved the prize, despite his unfortunate demise prior to its award.
As we get a bit closer to home, chronologically speaking, we move to 2009. As most people will know President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. It was awarded to him a scant 9 months after he assumed office. Now not only is that an exceptionally short period of time, but he very quickly afterwards announced INCREASES in troop numbers in Iraq/Afghanistan. I'm no expert, but that is not very peaceful, apart from being contrary to his election promises.
Now we jump forward just a shade to 2010. (Still love the fun people are having trying to say it out.) The nominations are in and they are: Russian activist Svetlana Gannushkina et al., Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo and the Internet.
No, really, this actually happened. I know it was a while ago, but I thought I might as well throw my 2 cents into the mix.
UTTER TRIPE!
The Internet is full of nonsense, garbage, crap, trash and a variety of other things I can not bring myself to describe. Agreed there is a small percentage of it which is, as the citation goes, a tool to advance "dialogue, debate and consensus through communication" and to promote democracy. But, really? This is the equivalent of nominating an entire University for the work that 1 single academic has done.
Of course Svetlana Gannushkina is nominated with her activist group, but that is a group of individuals who share a common goal. Most of the people on the Internet really do not care about "dialogue, debate and consensus through communication." Don't believe me, then pop over to a public forum. It's really bedlam over there, with uniformed, irrational and uninhibited people arguing in the most disjoint manner possible.
Then there is the small idea that the Internet is an abstract concept. It's not a single person, nor represented by a single person and/or small enough group. The anthropormorphisation just makes me sick to the core. Of course there is also the issue of "what is the Internet?"
The term internet (notice the lower case 'i') is simply a network of networks. Glossing over the technical details, a network is several computers connected to share resources. Connect networks together and you have an internet. Now we have a special case of an internet, the Internet (notice the upper case 'I'). Yes, the terminology is horrible, but nobody saw it coming.
The 1st internets were DARPA-
Now herein lies the problem, there was no legislation to control this. People joined and did whatever they wanted. Hence the Internet is in the form it is known to all today.
If the Internet were to win the Peace Prize, then I would be exceptionally distressed.
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