::: Think Macro :::

As I wrote before, I am looking to redesign the site and I started playing with it a little bit.  So, if you are experiencing problems with the website, please pardon the inconvenience.

With all the beauty of the Internet and the fact that it helps us dealing with distance and phisical presence, there is something really valuable about “being there.”  The Berkman Center places tons of material online and theoretically, nothing stops me from spending hours on their website listening to the talks and reading the reports.  However, for me this rarely happens, unless I have a concrete task in hand and am looking for a specific piece of information.

Now, spending the summer at Berkman, makes me more conscious of the online materials the center is releasing.  For example, about a week ago Jonathan Zittrain (JZ) gave a really interesting talk about the history of the internet through the lens of domain name regulation.  Unfortunately, that one was not documented, but then, when I came across the video below, I did sit down to watch (most of) it.  I don’t think I would do it unless I had the opportunity to listen to JZ “live” just a couple of days before, but now I know that there is a good explanation of the basics of the Internet out there that I can use.

Same goes for other items, such as the luncheon talks.  For example, this week, Eszter Hargittai presented her new data about disparities in Internet-related skills among college students.  Although I am following Eszter’s blog and try to read what she publishes, I doubt I would have a chance to spare an hour watching her recorder talk.  Now, after actually being there, I would encourage you to watch both, her talk from this week and another one she gave about a year ago (below).

Of course I am not the first one to think about the importance of being there.  The idea has been around for a while, especially in the business world.  However, it is always fascinating to reach a similar conclusion based on your own observations.  It seems that the ability to attach a “face” to the content has an aura effect, beyond the immediate enhancement of communication between the people involved.  It shifts one’s attention towards other information produced in the same space, and most interestingly, it extends to the online environment.  I think that so far I was paying attention only to the reverse dynamics (when online communication enhances the following offline interaction).  It is interesting to now how it works in the opposite direction as well.  Being there focuses you on the materials produced by the people and institutions invovled, while probably taking away from your attention to informatin produced elswhere, even if that is a place where you have previously spent a lot of time at.  Some food for thought…

The idea of CommFree has recently come up in our weekly discussions with Berkterns.  By a nice coincidence, XKCD published the following comic, which I wanted to share:

Enjoy :)

This digest also spent a month or two in the draft, but hopefully the stories are still interesting. It also got some fresher items as well. Hope you will find it useful.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have been away from blogging for a while and kind of got “out of shape” (I even think my blog was removed from Technorati as inactive).  I was really busy working on my A-exam papers, but now, after over 120 pages of single-spaced text, I am getting back on track.  It is a particularly good timing as I am spending this summer in a place where blogging is actually considered work :)

So, what I’ve been up to?  Here is a short update.

I am spending this summer at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society working in the Internet and Democracy project.  Berkman is a really interesting place where seemingly unlimited (primarily intellectual) resources are combined with a really comfortable environment for people to let their inner geek/nerd out.  I am an “intern” and there are about 30 of us working all over the yellow house on Everette street (and thanks to Cathrine White, we now go by Berkterns - Berkman interns).  The summer is only at the beginning, but it looks promising.  So, if you are in the Boston area, please feel free to touch base.  I will be here until early August.

Please note that I’ve started reworking this site a little bit in terms of content, structure, and infrastructure (I really need to upgrade the platform).  I am using Wordpress and I am now also looking for a new theme.  The theme should be widget ready and also to have tabs.  If you have any ideas, please let me know.

As to actual cooking, please check out a new initiative Veronica and I have started.  It is called “Cooking Travels” and the basic idea is to explore various cultures through their food.  We are looking for people who would be interested to contribute to it on a casual basis.  So please let me know if you would like to take part.

In the next few days, I plan to release some of the post drafts that have been sitting there for a while.  Hope at least some of the are still relevant :)

I have so much to write about, including updates from my experience at WTPF, but literally no time.  Between writing the A-exams, grading, writing the A-exams, traveling, and writing the A-exams, blogging moved to the second stage.  But this is really exciting news and I will make it brief.

So here is the update: a group of Cornell undergraduate students won a grant from the OLPCorps scheme and in a few weeks they are going to Tidjikja, Mauritania, to distribute 100 XO laptops to children and tutor them for about two months.  I am trying to help these guys with some advise, but they are doing great in spite of that :)

If you are interested, you can take a look at a wiki with the details of their proposal (PDF) and you can follow a blog they have recently started.  As I said, they received 100 XO laptops, USD 10,000 for expenses, and a week long training in Rwanda.  So, just two members of the team are actually going to Mauritania, but nevertheless they are still about USD 1,000 short.  If you happen to have an idea where they can apply for money on such a short notice, please share.  If you wish to contribute yourself (not necessarily the entire sum), you can do that as well (thank you in advance!).

I am really excited for the guys and I am sure this is going to an interesting experience from which we all will learn a lot.

If you happen to follow this blog, you have probably noticed the relative silence in the last month or so.  I was, and still am, extremely busy primarily with working on my A-exams and moving on with shaping my dissertation ideas.  One of the upcoming highlights is me going to the World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WTPF) to observe how international telecom policy agenda is being shaped in real time and to conduct some preliminary interviews with people who steer this process.

As many other similar events (such as the IGF) the forum is not aimed at producing binding resolutions.  Instead, its explicit aim is to set the agenda for the global telecom policy making.  Here is how it is described on its website:

It (WTPF-DE) is not designed to produce prescriptive outcomes with the binding force of an international treaty; rather, it strives to foster productive debate and build multi-stakeholder consensus on constructive ways forward.

This is why I think it is particularly fascinating event and this is why it will be interesting to look at how its outcomes describe MICT, priorities of related industries, and the associated regulatory principles.  Preparing for the trip I was pleasantly surprised to discover a wealth of information that the ITU made available online.  For example, there is a repository of all the iteration of the “Report by the Secretary General of ITU”, which is the pivotal document of this meeting.  In its preamble, the report states:

Decision 9 of the Antalya Plenipotentiary Conference states that arrangements for the fourth WTPF shall be in accordance with applicable Council decisions. In accordance with Decision 498 of the 2000 session of the ITU Council, discussions at the WTPF shall be based on a Report from the Secretary-General, incorporating the contributions and comments of ITU Member States and Sector Members (available at: http://www.itu.int/osg/csd/wtpf/wtpf2009/report.html) which will serve as the sole working Report of the Forum.

Since I am interested in words and in discourse, I thought to play a little bit with what was available.  Together with Veronica, and with the help of the Many Eyes project, we created the following visualization of the current Report by the Secretary General of ITU - the report that is at the basis of the upcoming discussion.  Here is what we got:

This image shows the 150 most common words in this 53 pages long document and the relative size of the word signifies its popularity.  As we can see from a quick glimpse, this forum is going to be about ITU, Internet, networks, services, issues, international, ICTs, countries, use, resolutions…

The decision in 2006 called for convergence to be the main topic of this forum, yet, as we can see in terms of popularity, the word “convergence” is loosing to many other concepts.  This is not to say that the discussion cannot focus on convergence using different terms, but I find this detail interesting.  it is particularly interesting, because if you look at visualization of the first draft of this report (before numerous comments by stakeholders were absorbed in it) the word “convergence” was much more dominant (you can see visualizations of drafts 2 and 3 in the links).

These visualizations do not tell us much about the substantive content of these documents, but I think they are a nice way to have a brief glance at the terminology that is dominating this debate.  I hope to continue following and blogging more on this subject.

Your comments will be highly appreciated!

I was listening to a recent conversation between Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author of “Googalization of Everything” and Matt Brittin, the newly appointed CEO of Google UK.

While I found the overall conversation interesting, one particular phrase caught my attention.  When he was defending Google against allegation of being parasitic (i.e. they do not produce content, but only provide access to it), Matt Brittin said that it is an: “easy criticism to level, particularly in a really tough downturn, which is affecting media companies all over the world including Google” (emphasis added).

Of course this is not a trend (yet?), but I find it really interesting that Google high-level executive  talks about the company in terms of media.  I think it further contributes to our growing realization that information and communication technologies (ICTs) as social factors are becomming more and more amalgamted with content.  This is a really interesting contribution to the argument that it is important to consider content related aspects when we talk about technology or in other words that we are talking about media, information, and communication technology (MICT) and not just ICT.

Just a note I wonted to take and to share.

In the video below a really nice, but nameless, girl is advertising the current ITU video contest titled “The future of ICTs” using some really “fancy” video effects.

Leaving aside the particularities of the video, the competition itself looks like a good opportunity for those of you who are interested in getting their ideas heard and perhaps even make it to the upcoming World Telecommunication Policy Forum in Lisbon in April.

In a nutshell, you have to have something visionary to say about the future of media, information, and communication technology, you have to be between the ages of 18 and 26, you should speak in English, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French or Russian, and you need to know how to shoot and upload videos to YouTube.

The deadline for your submissions is March 31.

Currently there is only one video response published on YouTube, so I guess there is still room to compete.  Here is the link again (you should read the conditions carefuly) and good luck!

Although it received quite a lot of (somewhat just) criticism on OLPC news (here and here with the second post trying to make sense of the first one), I think this is quite an interesting move on behalf of OLPC.  I think there is a lot of the youth potential, which the author of the blog post is overlooking and I would like to share this opportunity with those of you who are interested in OLPC-related activities.  For example, I think it may particularly interest those of you who were at the last ITU YF in Bangkok and had an opportunity to be thoroughly introduced to the XO laptops.

Here is the gist of the initiative:

What?

OLPCorps Africa is a unique grant program focused specifically on learning in Africa. Student teams are equipped with the tools, resources, and know-how to develop grassroots learning environments in an African country of their choice. OLPC is drawing upon the world’s student leaders to spark a university-led grassroots initiative in this global learning movement. Through OLPCorps Africa, OLPC is creating a global network of student leaders who will create a lasting impact at the local level, build a network of student activists, and initiate a grant program that will become renown.  (source)

Eligibility? - Undergraduate and graduate students, over 18 years old, from any country.

How?

$3,500,000 for 100 teams of college students to get $35,000 in support for 10 week projects in Africa. Each group gets 100 XO laptops, assorted hardware, a $10,000 stipend, and 10-day training in Kigali, Rwanda, before being sent out to projects. (source)

When?

The workshop will begin June 8th and end June 17th. Teams should arrive at least 1 day before. However, teams are encouraged to arrive as early as the 6th in order to adjust to the time-difference and leave room for flight-delays or any other unexpected circumstances which may arise. (source)

The duration of the Grant Program is 10 weeks (June - August), including the orientation in Kigali. Teams should arrange with their local partner to stay for at least 9 weeks. (source)

Proposals deadline is March 27th.

Please consult the wiki of the project for further details.  Note that there are many people there who are looking for local partners to form a proposal team.  So, if you are in Africa, you may find good partners there.

I was also excited to see that there is a group of Cornell students who have applied for this opportunity.  I hope to get in touch with them and offer them my help.  If any of you is applying, I would be also glad to hear about that!  Please let me know if I can help, particularly with linking people who are looking for partners.

Good luck everyone!