It might be easier to do something about North Korea’s nuclear truculence if we could make head or tail of the cryptic videos it has been posting on the web. The latest shows a dreaming man, some Korean script and a video of rockets flying through space while fires burn in skyscrapers and a pianist plays “We Are the World” at dirge tempo. Is this a harmless fantasy? A thrown-down gauntlet? Should the west respond with a statement? Should it post a video of its own? It is hard to know. Our traditional media are being “replaced” by the internet. But the “information” coming out of the information economy is often hard to decipher, and composed for purposes that are hard to discern.
如果我們能弄清楚朝鮮在網上發布的那些令人費解的視頻有何含義，也許我們在應對朝鮮的核挑釁行為時能更自如一些。朝鮮最近發布的一段視頻中出現了如下內容：一名正在做夢的男子、一些朝鮮文字、起火的摩天大樓，以及正飛越太空的火箭。視頻的背景音樂是以鋼琴彈奏的“We Are the World”，節奏處理得很哀婉。這是一種無害的意淫，還是一種正式的挑戰？對這一視頻西方是否應該發表聲明以回應？西方是不是也應該發布一份自己的視頻？這些問題很難回答。傳統媒體正在被互聯網所“取代”。然而，信息經濟釋放的“信息”往往難以解讀，炮制這些“信息”的目的也難以辨明。