Nov 22, 09
On Connecting The Dots - A Response To Lessig On Transparency
Celebrated legal scholar, intellectual property activist and now congressional reformer Lawrence Lessig has written a provocative and somewhat surprising article in this month’s New Republic. Titled “Against Transparency“, the article questions whether a move towards increasing government transparency – as advocated by President Obama as a candidate and by nonprofit groups like the Sunlight Foundation – will lead towards better government or, as he fears,...
Clay Shirky and Accountability Journalism
NYU Professor Clay Shirky published an essay, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable“, that suggested that journalists needed to radically rethink the assumptions that have made market-supported newspapers possible. It was a bombshell, cited and commented on thousands of times. Today, Clay outlined the arguments of the essay at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School and filled a room with journalists, scholars and others interested in his views. Clay’s...
Unpacking “The Twitter Revolution” In Moldova
On Sunday, April 5th, the governing Communist party won over 50% of the vote in Parliamentary elections. This was decidedly a surprise, as Communists had lost the last round of municipal elections, and as an organized anti-Communist movement had been warning that elections might be rigged. More than 10,000 young activists took to the streets of Chisinau on Tuesday, occupying Chisinau’s central square, the Piata Marii Adunari Nationale. The protests turned violent in the evening:...
China’s Complicated Internet Culture
The Chinese internet is lots more complicated than you think. That's the core message of Rebecca MacKinnon's talk at the Berkman Center on the Chinese internet, deliberative government and internet filtering. Most of the models we have for understanding the Chinese internet are wrong, or at the very least, deceptive. Scholars who follow the Chinese internet closely, like Rebecca, and wrestling with explanations of what, in fact, is happening with the Internet and movements towards...
The Fallacy of Examples, and the Problems of Extrapolating from Media
David Weinberger has an intriguing post up today about the “Fallacy of Examples“. He’s reacting to a column from Nick Kristof in the New York Times titled “The Luckiest Girl“, which recounts the story of Beatrice Biira, a young woman from Uganda whose improbable journey through Connecticut College began with the donation of a goat to her family through Heifer International. David finds the story moving - how could you not! - but points out that Biira’s...
The Ninja Gap
David Weinberger somehow manages to find time to write books, write thoughtful blog posts, AND produce a periodic newsletter - Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization - that’s one of he best reads on the ‘net. I’m deeply flattered that the current issue features David’s thoughts on some of the topics I’m obsessed with: media attention, caring, international understanding. More generously, he gives me the chance to react to his essay within the essay… ...
Networks for Change
By WorldChanging Chicago blogger Jason Diceman There is no shortage of articles about how social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook can be used to support grassroots and progressive campaigns and professional networking sites like Linkedin and XING can help you get connected in your sector, but what about the networking sites specifically created to support social and environmental causes? Worldchanging has been covering this trend on an ongoing basis (see for instance, Idealist,...
Vote for the Internet of Your Choice
Candidates and elections are surface manifestations of the democratic intention behind a republican or representative system of government. An indvidual's vote in an election is more ritual than real participation. The relatively low sense of true participation is the probable cause of a sense of disconnection that manifests as voter apathy. Even in 2004, when it appeared that voters were fired up and the vote was very close, the actual turnout was only 55.3%. This is better than the...
Cass Sunstein’s “Infotopia?
Cass Sunstein’s book, Republic.com, published in 2001, offered a useful challenge to some of the cyber-utopian promises celebrated at the turn of the millenium. Nicholas Negroponte, in “Being Digital“, offered the fond hope that future news readers would consult “The Daily Me”, a customized set of news items designed to meet their specific tastes. Sunstein seizes on this possibility and offers a strong caution: if we can choose our own media, it’s possible...
Freedom to Connect
David Isenberg's name pops up occasionally here on WorldChanging, and for good reason. He's one of the more forward-thinking telecom specialists around, and his work on whether to embed "intelligence" in a network or in the devices at the end (the latter is far better) has shaped the thinking of many people now working on social networks and the evolution of the Internet. I first met David a decade ago at Global Business Network, and I read his blog at Isen.com religiously. David wrote to me...
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