This week, in a faxed response, the Information Office said the Internet news coordination bureau, which it also refers to as bureau nine, "is mainly responsible for 'guidance, coordination and other work related to the construction and management of Web culture.' " It gave no further details.
The new agency, officially called the Internet news coordination bureau, is part of this effort to better monitor the communications of Chinese Web users, who total nearly 400 million by official estimates.
During its early days, the Internet gave coordination and efficiency to the powerless.
FROM TWITTERERS in Tehran to bloggers in Burma, citizens living under authoritarian regimes depend upon free access to the Internet for information, coordination and the ability to make themselves heard.
"Stable Internet routing without global coordination". Lixin Gao and Jennifer Rexford.
In distributed research teams, internet is used for coordination, exchange of resources and sharing work, with the underlying assumption that internet use increases research productivity.
Mr. Richmond said Fox hoped that the new arrangement would improve the Internet sites through better coordination with the television divisions.
At the same time, digital piracy in the West and censorship in China continue to vex policy makers, prompting calls for greater coordination of Internet strategies.
But Mr. Smith said there are no plans to spin off DirecTV to shareholders as a truly pure play, because developing Internet services will require coordination between DirecTV and Hughes Network Systems.
Every human endeavour that requires more than one person's effort has to devote a certain amount of resources to the problem of coordination: the internet has greatly simplified this problem (think again of the hours activists used to spend simply addressing postcards with information about an upcoming demonstration).
