Antiglobalization Proponents Use Apple Technologies To Film Protests

by , 7:00 AM EDT, September 13th, 2001

A Wall Street Journal Article set our irony detector off. Pui-Wing Tam, a journalist who has covered Apple related events for the Wall Street Journal in the past, has penned a piece about the efforts of antiglobalization forces to disseminate their message to each other through the Internet with digital video. The instruments of their documentary efforts are technologies developed by one of the very companies that has sometimes been the object of protest, Apple. From the Wall Street Journal article:

This month's meetings in Washington may test that proposition. Video activists are busy gearing up for the event by organizing editing studios, banks of computers and other gear to allow independent cameramen to stream audio and video of the protests onto the Web. Becoming a video activist costs only the several thousand dollars required to buy a digital camcorder and assemble other gear like microphones and tape. Many video activists also load sophisticated but easy-to-master editing programs, such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iMovie and Final Cut Pro, on laptops, which are easy to carry around.

Apple's Final Cut Pro has often been cited (and sighted) as a tool used by some of the mobile reporters for mainstream news organizations such as CNN, but this article highlights the way desktop video is continuing to change our culture in much the same way as desktop publishing did more than a decade ago.

Our quote above is the only aspect of this article that involves Apple, but if you are interested in this subject, you will find the full article to be a good read.

The Mac Observer Spin:

The irony in this story is that not only has Apple been the object of some protests on some occasions, but the protestors are using tools made possible only by the forces of technology and globalization to protest technology and globalization.

Wall Street Journal Article