I don’t know about you, but when I hear folks say “the good old days” were better, I often cringe. In my own life, for many items, they the “old days” were not better and my life now is overall of a higher quality due to advances in technology and other facets of life.

One example is the Great Fire Wall of China website. In the past, before PCs and technology allowed for such a thing (e.g., I actually learned to type on this thing called a typewriter — how about you?!), this type of reporting and monitoring mechanism would not have been technologically possible. Kudos to Erik Slayter for bringing this site to my attention.

In short, click on the logo that appears on the home page and you can then plug in a web address and test whether it’s currently blocked in China.  So far the Cal Poly MBA trip blog remains up and accessible in China! You can also review some of the sites that have been tested and have been blocked in China.  Not that this is all bad — some of these sites one could argue are so whacked out and/or biased on their view of the world that being blocked out is a no harm-no foul.

Test your own student blog to see what happens. For those of you that are MySpace.com addicts, access from China ain’t gonna happen for you!

Play around with it and have some fun.  With the click of a button and modern technology, one consequence of a government’s censorship policy can be pulled up before your eyes to evaluate.  Amazing.