Before Google Reflection

For this assignment, I found a Chinese propaganda leaflet from the Mao-era. The leaflet boasts about China’s military power in order to “brainwash” the citizens into believing that the country is in good hands under Chairman Mao Zhedong when in reality, the country was in turmoil.

This leaflet currently resides in my father’s office. He has studied China for several decades and knows the country’s history very well. He has a large collection of Chinese documents that are not available online. Having gone over these historic papers, I asked him to send the leaflet so I could further analyze it.

I chose this piece because it was a powerful form of press that helped Mao stay in power for so long. People remained confident in him because they were forced to think that way. Any information that made Mao look bad was destroyed and the opposition was eliminated by and large.

This leaflet made me more appreciative of search engines. In the past, people often had limited access to information and the information they did have was often twisted in some way. Now, with search engines, we can reach thousands of sources with just one click and decide for ourselves what is right and wrong.

As long as the World Wide Web remains free of censorship, I believe our world will continue to improve as information becomes more transparent and we can form our own opinions without fear of punishment. Search engines have truly revolutionized how we think and grow as human beings.