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Rupert Murdoch's statement about being able to take on Google and that he would prefer fewer paying readers of the WSJ than more freeloaders. What if the net wasn't neutral? What would/could it look like…
November 11, 2009
links for 2009-11-11
November 10, 2009
links for 2009-11-10
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but is he willing to veto?
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Rammstein's album "Liebe ist für alle da" censored in Germany with & without box set featuring 6 pink latex replicas of the band-members' penises
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Job security stifles innovation. Could augmented reality be the solution? AR for a greener planet!
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Campaign to stop Uganda's proposed anti-homosexuality bill, which will make gay relations between disabled people and those under 18 a capital offence
November 9, 2009
Presenting at ITP Social Activism using Mobile Technology class
Back in May I had the pleasure of exploring The Future, also known as NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program Spring Show 2009. Last night I had the pleasure of actually molding it by guest lecturing Nathan Freitas’ Social Activism using Mobile Technology class at ITP with my colleague Emily Jacobi.
Social Activism using Mobile Technology class & Dd Advisor Abby Goldberg
The topic of our class was “Grassroots Development – Techniques & Strategies,” discussing Digital Democracy’s experiences doing fieldwork. Before introducing the process by which we developed Handheld Human Rights and the story of developing it in the field, we wanted to have an understanding of how the students have begun to grow their own ideas. Having just completed their midterm assignments, we went around and had each group introduce themselves and their project, touching on these four points:
- Who are you and what is your project?
- How did you determine the need?
- What’s your biggest barrier to success?
- What impact do you hope to achieve?
I’m curious to watch the projects as they grow develop and change. Here’s where they are so far (in no particular order):
My personal favorite was Hikomen (sp?) – a lifestreaming robot that people bring outside with them to introduce agoraphobic people to the outside world. It’s connected to either a person’s heart, creating a response mechanism for the person outside to literally feel the response of the agoraphobic person, but who sees the world via this robot. I see it as an arduino meets lifestreaming meets Tamagotchi versus agoraphobia. A lot of people have the disease and look to the few friends they have help. Similar to last year’s kokoro (that I obsessed over) in terms of the body response, I think understanding how humans are interacting with computers can make us more human is a powerful idea to explore in more depth. The biggest problem the creator identified was adoption, which I think is true and isn’t. For the agoraphobes, it could definitely be complicated to engage with and will be a fantastic exploration of successful UI for psychology. For those who want to help, I think it’ll be a lot of fun to figure out how to get users to adopt these things. Tamagotchi first came to my mind because of how popular those things were in my youth (absolutely dating myself here). Now imagine if there was a human being on the other side. And you were helping them?? I want one!
BK PK tackles the issue of finding a parking space by creating a gift economy around parking spots. Sort of a take a penny / leave a penny for parking spaces with your cell phone. Biggest problem identified? The government. Department of Transportation (DOT) won’t give up the data that belongs to citizens (despite Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications’ best efforts). The impact that they hope to achieve is stronger community, better access to local businesses, & a better Main Street. BUT WAIT! If the goal is community, why not utilize it as a resource? My recommendation was to through community parties get them involved and interested in gathering the data needed for the project themselves. Why bother with the government when people will be happy to crowdsource it themselves under the right circumstances? Key to project development: to thine own self be true. First step: check out stoop sales in Park Slope this weekend and talk to the young professionals with babies who are likely to have cars and ask them how to access their communities with this kind of tool.
ytbprty (YouTubeParty) is a project to circumvent censorship in Turkey. YouTube has been blocked for a while as I mentioned in an earlier post I had written from Istanbul. This project traverses two problems: government & marketing. The first by being smarter than their censors. The second by having a party to make the project go viral. The impact sought after is “making people feel like they’ve lost something” rather than what I initially thought would be making people feel like they’ve gained something. At the peak of the party, everything shuts off, making people more aware that they are being censored and that they now have a tool so that they don’t have to be. Citizens take charge.
One student abandoned his original project to create a suicide prevention game with the Trevor Project to focus instead on making an outrageous game that has user buy in. His stated barrier is that the issue is too serious for a test case. The actual problem is one that the non-profit sector often faces where serious development takes serious time and ample resources. This could potentially be a great time for partnership to harness the skills of some people who have been focused on gaming (MIT comes to mind), researchers concentrating on suicide prevention and practitioners at the organization and synthesize it into a mobile project. A difficult project indeed, but power in numbers.
One student is creating a flash-based game to prove inventory management skills. It involves stages of finding and sorting crabs to prove cognitive ability. The mobile port is an experiment to traverse the challenge that people are not accustomed to using phones while they are comfortable with computers.
NOAH (Networked Organisms and Habitats) – spot living organizsms, geotag them into an “ark” (database). Problem? How biodiverse is a neighborhood. Solution? Have people document it. Challenge? Product Appeal. Solution? Great product design for smart phones. Creative. Simple. Clear. Also has missions for connecting into sympathetic organizations. The backend sorting is probably going to be the trickiest part of this. Check them out as they crack that on GitHub.
Givkwik is proprietary & confidential so I won’t mention anything about it other than I find it interesting that there are still some people working on closed source projects for non-profits despite the trend in the other direction.
Reducing Long-Term Homelessness with Mobile Technology seeks to alleviate some of the issues that people who have become homeless face, namely their ability to get back on the grid. This allows just that by giving homeless people an actual phone number without having to supply a phone or a financial contract. It’s free and accessible at any public computer. Partnering with Google Voice, who provides the number, they’re test a small sample and see whether this is a tool that will be used by a population that is known for tech inaccessibility. Should be something to draw lessons from.
Some other projects include SMS No Smoke – a message-based system that helps people quit smoking by being supportive and providing reminders. earth255 is an on demand carpooling service. And i <3 pv campaign
One of the most interesting things to me when I’m acting as educator is to see how students are engaged with the technologies around them, not just how they talk about them. It was curious to note that at ITP it was nearly 100% Mac-based, aside from the Netbooks here and there. The phones were mostly either Androids or iPhones. The students were generally typing away the majority of the time (doubtlessly taking notes), until the end where I started to give more of the details about how Handheld Human Rights works and asking for feedback.
What I found most interesting was what forms students chose to send in their assignments. Surprisingly, as some of you may have noticed from this posting’s lack of links, most were not using social media sites to distribute their work. I found it to be a frustrating mess to keep track of all the students projects. While some at least have links to PDFs from their blogs, many still sent attachments. A lot communicate visually and there was certainly a general adherence to visual forms such as presentations and videos. None of these were on what I consider my go-tos (slideshare, YouTube, Vimeo). One was drop.io, an interesting new player in the mix. Even at this stage, education seems to be a place separated from the rest of the world and outside conversations. How could anyone find out what’s happening here? Thankfully there are a couple of people blogging about it.
During the ITP show last year, I went around speaking with students from the various classes doing amazing things with Asterisk, asking if they heard of the Freedom Fone project out of Zimbabwe, which expands the power of community radio through mobile phones. Unfortunately and surprisingly, no one had heard of it. As educational institutions change and shift in this digital era, it’s going to be crucial to close that communication gap. With the energy and intelligence in ITP, it’s important to connect these students to open source projects that are realities around the world and have them build upon, improve and innovate rather than reinvent the wheel or, worse yet, not learn from others mistakes.
Emily and I chat with Nathan skyping in from India (@D__o photo)
Be sure to stay tuned as I keep an eye on how things develop and with Nathan’s every day interactions with the students.
Nathan and I chat NYC to Dharamsala
November 8, 2009
Mobiles Hidden in Monks’ Robes
My colleague Emily wrote an article about our experiences during the Saffron Uprising and the creation of Digital Democracy. It was published by MobileActive:
On Sept. 26, the protests were still going strong. It was 11 am, and Aung Aung Ye was juggling two computers and a mobile phone from his office in Thailand. That morning he was on his mobile talking with contacts in Burma’s commercial capital, Rangoon. At 1:34 am EST, he told me that more than 10,000 people had gathered near Traders Hotel in downtown Rangoon.
By 1:40, the mood, still palpable electronically, changed. He had received frantic calls – the military had begun using tear gas and bullets against the peaceful demonstrators. His status message read, “Now, shooting in North/Oakalapa.” Two minutes later, it changed again – “Don’t brake my heart into a million pieces.”
Make sure to check out the rest.
November 7, 2009
links for 2009-11-07
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With more bloggers than journalists in jail, it's important to highlight the people who are risking their lives just by raising their voices.
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Censorship for everyone! Want to censor yourself? Go ahead! Anyone else can too! What a difference a little "block" button can mean for YouTube.
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If only people knew what information they were actually giving up. Wait, is Google really going to tell us?
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Australian government sponors a "hack day" for programmers to go wild with government data. Love the tagcloud of functions of the Australian government. Reminds me of the US constitution tag cloud on my blog.
November 3, 2009
links for 2009-11-03
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Today marks the first government election to use a new cryptographic scheme that lets both voters and auditors check that votes were cast and recorded accurately will be held tomorrow in Takoma Park, MD. Not open source but a HUGE step in the right direction. How will the voters do?
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Pirates clamp down on corruptions of the soul.
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Supercomputers for super-cracking
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In voting, transparency is key. Thanks Brazil for realizing that if a 5 year old can hack your machine then we may accidentally elect Elmo.
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Popping the big question: What's the return on investment?
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“I was raised on the idea that all men are created equal and I never forgot that. … That’s what we fought for in WWII – the idea that we could be different but still be equal.” – on WW2 ethics application to the gay marriage debate.
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As non-profits become more adept at targeting communities and analyzing the links among constituents, I'm hoping that there's enough spill over from the security community. Especially in hostile situations, network analysis can be dangerous to those on the ground without the safety of a stable legal structure.
October 29, 2009
links for 2009-10-29
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Calling collect doesn't exist on mobile phones but this idea opens options for users in need with no available funds.
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An animation looking at how new technologies are affecting human rights & freedom in the digital age
October 22, 2009
links for 2009-10-22
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"Whoops" moment leads to government transparency. Sequoia Voting Systems seems to have inadvertently released the SQL code for its voting databases. This is a surprise first look at how the election system works, which is surprising in and of itself.
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Breakdown of Internationalization & Localization techniques.
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Raytheon Android Tactical System, or RATS for short – "A soldier could make an unmanned plane a 'buddy,' for instance, and track its progress on a map using his phone. He could then access streaming video from the plane, giving him a bird's eye view of the area." Curious if this will help endeavors like #GuardianProject or hinder the opportunity for mobiles as tools for positive social change.
October 21, 2009
links for 2009-10-21
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As one of the foremost journalism resources around the world, it's fantastic to see that WordPress is thoughtful about security
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So much for the legal system. Apparently even when businesses try to (anonymously) put up a fight against illegal government encroachment, the post Patriot Act US government still wins in the end.
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Example of the trouble with traditional media not embracing Creative Commons. Can they continue to be considered the 5th estate when it's doubtful that they have citizens best interests in mind? This case will set an interesting precedent.
October 5, 2009
links for 2009-10-05
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Paypal flags transactions from certain countries as "suspect" automatically. Rather than profiling by individual behavior, they are do that other kind of profiling…. I wonder who else is as well.
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A simple idea for education: instead of schools having a list of things one cannot do on their networks, why not have a list of what is encouraged.
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Honest look at a misunderstood and marginalized community – the Amish. Not luddites, just picky about their tech because of the impact it has on communities. A must read.
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Breakdown of billionaire worth contra GDP. Unfortunately it leaves off the number of people in those countries.
