Recent news related

The preparations for the next Internet Governance Forum are under way and on February 9th Geneva hosted the first round of Open Consultations.  I haven’t had a chance to watch the recording or read the transcript yet, but there were a few reactions to it already in the blogosphere.   Jeremy Malcolm of the IGF Watch has pointed out the political struggle between the various UN bodies that claim the authority over deciding the future of the IGF and Wolfgang Kleinwachter provided an analysis of this development alerting against erosion of the principle of multistakeholderism from the future Internet Governance arrangement.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“Next Generation Connectivity” (PDF) – One of the (if not the) most comprehensive review of broadband policies worldwide; commissioned by the FCC, conducted by the Berkman Center.  If you don’t have the time or stamina for the entire thing, there is a Berkman radio bit about it and there is an NPR take on it.  There is also an interview with Yochai Benkler where he discusses the report:

“Sustainable Development and ICTs” (via @ictlogist) – A special issue of Information, Communication & Society; unfortunately, it is behind a paywall (with an exception of one article).

“Development as politics” – A promising interview with Nobel Laureate Michale Spence, recommended by Chris Blattman from Yale, about international development and politics.  You may find the report he refers to here.

“Obstacles to social mobility weaken equal opportunities and economic growth, says OECD study” – An OECD study about social mobility where they demonstrate that parents’ socioeconomic status and education are the two most influential factors on the child’s socioeconomic success; i wonder if the dynamics are similar in the non OECD countries.

“The 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review” (via holesinthenet) – A report that details the trends in usage of social networks and other “new” media in the US.

And some regional stats:

• Azerbaijan – Broadband
• Europe – Mobile, internet
• USA – Internet

If you are into regional stats, World Bank made their API available for developers to play with their data and also offer some widgets on their website, like this one, showing Internet penetration worldwide (based on the ITU data):

Internet users (per 100 people) - 2008

“Feltron 2009 Annual Report” – Or as Flowing Data called it – “OCD Made Sexy” – Nicholas Feltron collects data about himself throughout the year and then publishes it in really cool infographics.

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“Media Piracy in Emerging Economies” – Joe Karaganis, of the Social Science Research Council, presented a forthcoming six-country study of media piracy at the Berkman Center  It turns out to be quite an interesting aspect of MICT diffusion and adoption.  In the link you will find the video,  but you can also download the audio recording, and read David Weinberg’s live blogging from the event.

“Africa’s Eastern Promise” (via Chris Blattman) – An interesting and thoughtful analysis of Africa-China relations and the role and the interests of the later in the developmental efforts of the former.

“Russia’s New Media Paradox” (via @evgenymorozov) – Maxim Trudolyubov, of the NY Review of Books, writes a very detailed and thoughtful analysis of the state of “new” media in Russia and the new affordances it brings to both civic discourse and ability to suppress it; I think it resonates well with some earlier arguments of Evgeny Morozov about how the “new” media aid oppressive regimes.

“Revising the Lisbon Strategy through the OECD Innovation Strategy” – A speech by OECD Deputy Secretary-General Pier Carlo Padoan on topics of innovation and entrepreneurship.

“The economics of child soldiering” – A blog post about research conducted by Cris Blattman of Yale, where he takes a very (perhaps too) analytical approach to the problem of child soldering; I found it particularly interesting because of the links one can potentially make between developing human capital as a way of fighting this horrific phenomenon.

Digital Divide

“Hope founders where ministers lack e-mail” (via @evgenymorozov) – A apiece on the efforts and challenges of bringing the Sudanese government online.

MICT regulation

“German Government Steps Away from 2009 Filtering Plan” and “Italian gov’t backs down slightly over Web regulation bill” (via Information Policy) – It is actually nice to see a different take on content regulation; most of other countries seem to tighten their grip of the content.

“Icelandic Modern Media Initiative” (via @rmack) – An even more interesting initiative by the government of Iceland to sort out the new media environment in an open-minded manner.  As La Quadrature du Net describes this, it is a parliamentarian resolution aimed “to initiate a legislative process in order to guarantee by law the freedom of expression and communication on the Internet.”

“Internet Regulations Will Hinder Job Creation” (PDF) – A recent study conducted by the American Consumer Institute that suggests that Net Neutrality regulation will harm job creation; basically what they say is that infrastructure companies generate more investment and more jobs, compared to the companies that build their business based on those networks.

“Bottom Line: The Truth About Network Neutrality & Investment” – An older report from the “Free Press” looking at the links between net neutrality principles and investment; here you can also find criticism of the this report.

MICT business

“Startup Failure Rates — The REAL Numbers” (via comments at Re-gur-gi-tate (n)) – A bit old (2008), but still interesting statistics about the success/failure rates of new businesses, based on a book on the subject (if you are looking for the bottom line, 29% survive).

“Typos may earn Google $500m a year” (via @sdkaaa) – Something that I think is obvious being explained with data and detail; the domain name industry has been making money out of URLs that are misspellings of popular websites by hosting ads there – this article lays out how Google is making quite a lot of money out of it as well.  I still wonder who clicks on ads on those websites?

“New” media

“Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It’s Awesome” (via @Viil) – A NYT report about a study about the most emailed NYT articles; apparently the longer and the more intellectually engaging articles are getting emailed more.  Surprising!

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“A Brief History of Time… in the New World!” – A nice story about clocks and gravity.

On a bit more serious note, check out “Asia Internet Museum” – I think this is a really interesting initiative as we are not documenting enough the development of this medium.

Also, in a similar vein – “20 Great Talks on the Future of Information” – i think I’ve heard a couple of them in the past, so I think it should be a valuable link to have.

“Save pens. Use Garamond font” – Have you ever wondered how much ink it takes for the various fonts we use?  Flowing Data shares an insight…

“PleaseRobMe.com” (via @evgenymorozov) – A very creative way to raise awareness about how we use and share information from a group that seems equally creative – they call themselves “Forthehack“.

A bit old, but still interesting to listen to – Steve Job’s commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 (via the scholarly kitchen):

“A brief history of pretty much everything” – A nice animation that sums up pretty much everything, which I came across while looking for material for the course I am TAing for this semester.

“Hovercouch” – Somewhat crazy and fun project by one of Veronica’s friends.

What I found particularly interesting about this talk is her attempt to introduce sociological literature into a predominantly legal debate.  Her point of departure is the gap between the rhetoric of law and policy aimed at shaping the information society and the realities on the ground.  For example, she points at the language of economic liberties as fueling the information society governance debate, but at the same time there are laws and regulations that significantly restrict those liberties being that through strong copyright or weak individual privacy protections.  She also highlights that while the policy discourse is usually abstract, the individual’s interpretation of the law and his or her interaction with information and technology is very concrete and situated in a particular physical reality.  Although she focuses on the policy debate in the US, I think her framework can be helpful in thinking about discourse and policymaking elsewhere.

Reaching across the disciplinary isle is not a trivial task and during Cohen’s talk at Berkman it was interesting to see how, during the Q&A, the lawyers in the room took her presentation to different directions from where I think it would go has she been giving her talk in a Communication or an STS departments.  Yet, I think she did a very good job linking the abstract thinking of sociologists about the concrete actions of people to the concrete thinking of the legal scholars about the abstract concepts of the law.  I view it is a part of a very important interdisciplinary dialogue we should have in the field and on purely selfish grounds it helps me to think about communicating the relevance of my dissertation research to the more “hard core” policy debate.

You are invited to watch the talk as well as to read its coverage on Ethan Zuckerman’s, David Weinberger’s, and John Palfrey’s blogs.  In addition, I found a recent paper written by Julie Cohen, which provides an outline of her book (in case you don’t have the time to watch the video).

Enjoy!

• Diplo Foundation Internet Governance Capacity Building Prorgam (deadline: Feb. 12)
• Berkman Center Summer Internship (deadline: March 5)

I was lucky enough to experience both of those opportunities and I am warmly recommend them.

More details and links for each of those opportunities can be found below.

Opportunity 1: Diplo Foundation Internet Capacity Building Program

DiploFoundation is currently accepting applications for the 2010 Internet Governance Capacity Building Programme (IGCBP10). This online programme is designed to improve Internet governance (IG) related knowledge and skills for participants mainly from developing countries and assist them to participate in the global decision-shaping debates on Internet Governance (IG). The Programme also facilitates community building among individuals with different national, cultural, and professional backgrounds.

The deadline for applications is February 12.  More information can be found here.

I went through this program a year ago and I think it is a very good entry point into the internet governance debate and the internet governance community.  Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Opportunity 2: Berkman Center Summer Internship

For 10 weeks each summer The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University swings opens the doors of its big yellow house to welcome a group of talented, curious, and energetic full-time interns who are passionate about the promise of the Internet and issues related to media and journalism, civic engagement, policy, identity and privacy, education, technology, the developing world, law, and more. The interns team up with Berkman projects like Herdict, Cooperation, Digital Natives, Law Lab, Internet & Democracy, or the OpenNet Initiative, where they have an opportunity for deep and substantive involvement in project operation. Performing topic-based research; drafting and editing blog posts, papers and other written outputs; conducting outreach, developing partnerships, and maintaining relationships; exploring project and research design; and undertaking academic responsibilities of all kinds both independently and collaboratively are part of the Berkman summer intern experience. Specific tasks and experiences vary depending on interns’ skills and project needs.

In addition to contributing to project based work, summer interns participate in special events and lectures with Berkman faculty and fellows, engage each other through community experiences like the weekly interns discussion hours, and each year innovate for themselves new opportunities for fun and learning, like organizing debates, producing podcasts and other media outputs, and hosting book clubs and cookoffs (!).

The deadline for applying for this one is March 5.  More information can be found in this link.

As before, if you think i can help you clearing any ambiguities about this opportunity, please feel free to contact me.

Good luck!  And as always, it would be great to hear if anyone manages to take advantage of these opportunities.

The project has been out there for three years, but the website is rather new and is still considered under development as the team is figuring out the best way to capture and analyze the use of CC licenses around the world.  They have built an online (wiki-based) platform/repository which presents the raw data and some visualizations for others to use and think about. This is what global distribution of CC licenses looks like.

There are overall estimated 170,268,161 CC licenses in the world, but the map refers to a subset of them.  It includes only the ported (i.e. jurisdiction specific) licenses – those that could be linked to a specific geographic location.  Apparently, there are about 50 countries in the world that have strong CC communities who worked on translating and adopting the general licenses to the local jurisdiction.

The darker areas of the map correspond to the higher number of CC licenses in the country.  Here is for example what Europe looks like once we zoom in:

If you go to the website, you can see the actual number once you hover over the map with your mouse.  The way they collect these data is through counting back-links (or in-links) to specific CC deed pages (like this one).  Of course it is not perfect, but it is more than what we had before and it is there for everyone to use.  The idea behind the site is to build a “live data wiki”, which brings its own challenges such as the data being updated constantly, but not the analysis and the explanations.

On the wiki you can find data about the individual countries and also what they call “freedom scores”.  These scores refers to the degree of openness of the licenses used in each place.  As you may know, there are different types of licenses one can give to his or her work.  This blog, for example, is licensed under by-nc-sa license, which would not score very high on the freedom scale (and I also need to fix things, so it would actually show here).  Overall, this is what the world looks like in terms of openness of the CC licenses:

As before, the darker areas represent higher scores.  You may want to take a look at this table comparing the scores of different countries side by side.

If you have the time, I suggest you watch the talk (I wish it was possible to embed videos from Berkman website :).  Giorgos goes further into a case study, asking whether people utilize the CC licenses and actually work with the open content.  I know that I learned a lot about CC that I did not know about before.