Category: Advanced Cyber/IO

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Bojan Radej: Data Journalism Handbook & Graphic Map

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Media, Methods & Process
Bojan Radej

The Data Journalism Handbook is Out

6 months ago at Mozilla Festival 2011, the Data Journalism Handbook was born. Thanks for your interest in the book – I have great pleasure in announcing that the Handbook is now live!

The Handbook features contributions from over 70 leading practitioners of data journalism from every corner of the globe, from Japan to Finland, Nigeria to the US and from leading news outlets such the New York Times, Zeit Online, the BBC and the Guardian. The Handbook is an open educational resource, under a creative commons licence (CC-BY-SA) so please share it with your friends and remix it. We hope that it will encourage many budding data journalists to look at data as a source and give them courage to tackle it, as well as showcasing some great examples of journalism using data as inspiration for future stories.

You can find the handbook at: http://datajournalismhandbook.org/ 

Also available for pre-order is the e- and print version from O'Reilly Media – http://oreil.ly/ddj-e-print – so if you are interested in a version to read offline, take a look!

We will soon have the facility to submit feedback via the website if you spot any errors or have any improvements for the next version,

—
Lucy Chambers

Infographic impresario Lulu Pinney created this superb poster, which gives an overview of the contents of the Data Journalism Handbook.

Click on Image to Enlarge
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Michel Bauwens: Knowing Networks as an Alternative to Closed Networks

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics
Michel Bauwens

Phi Beta Iota:  This is one of the most elegant trenchant discussions we have seen on the imperatives for arriving at collective intelligence through open methods.   The entire contribution is below the line.

Debating the Iron Law of Bureaucracy and the Power Law: Knowing Networks as an alternative to scale-free networks

Franco Iacomella, 2nd May 2012

These are further elements to the debate (between Zeynep Tufekci and others) as to whether and how the Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which affects initially egalitarian distributed networks, can be countered.

1. Clay Shirky: inequality is not always unfair

Classic discusion of how the power law operates in blogs, and why it is inevitable, by one of the most influential commentators, by Clay Shirky.

“A persistent theme among people writing about the social aspects of weblogging is to note (and usually lament) the rise of an A-list, a small set of webloggers who account for a majority of the traffic in the weblog world. This complaint follows a common pattern we’ve seen with MUDs, BBSes, and online communities like Echo and the WELL. A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on.

Prior to recent theoretical work on social networks, the usual explanations invoked individual behaviors: some members of the community had sold out, the spirit of the early days was being diluted by the newcomers, et cetera. We now know that these explanations are wrong, or at least beside the point. What matters is this: Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality.”

Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: Knowing Networks as an Alternative to Closed Networks”

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Penguin: Google’s Public Destruction Heralded by Those Ignorant of Google-zilla

Advanced Cyber/IO
Who, Me?

Google's Destruction Is Already Under Way

Nicholas Carlson

Business Insider, Apr. 27, 2012

The Federal Trade Commission has hired the prosecutor who got Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh the death penalty to lead its investigation into potential anti-trust violations by Google, report David Streitfeld and Edward Wyatt of the New York Times.

Her name is Beth Wilkinson.

Experts tell the Times her hiring sends “a strong signal that [the FTC is] prepared to take the Internet giant to court.”

According to Streitfeld and Wyatt, the government's concern with Google is that “Google has manipulated its search results, making it less likely that competing companies or products appear at the top of a results page.”

Phi Beta Iota:   Google is light years ahead of any government, and those who think Google search is even remotely vulnerable to government intervention have no clue as to either Google's strength, or governmental ignorance.  We have been calling for a center for computational mathematics for years now, but governments would rather be ignorant and unethical than effective.  Yes Google has programmable search engines and yes, Google is corrupt to the bone at the top (very much like the US Government, 80-90% good people trapped in a bad system).   It is not possible to understand Google without reading The Google Trilogy by Stephen Arnold.
See Also:
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Patrick Meier: Future Trends in Global Geospatial Information Management

Advanced Cyber/IO, Geospatial
Patrick Meier

Future Trends in Global Geospatial Information Management

The United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Information Management (GGIM) recently organized a meeting of thought-leaders and visionaries in the geo-spatial world to identify the future of this space over the next 5-10 years. These experts came up with some 80+ individual predictions. I've included some of the more interesting ones below.

  • The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a tool for rapid geospatial data collection will increase.
  • 3D and even 4D geospatial information, incorporating time as the fourth dimension, will increase.
  • Technology will move faster than legal and governance structures.
  • The link between geospatial information and social media, plus other actor networks, will become more and more important.
  • Real-time info will enable more dynamic modeling & response to disasters.
  • Free and open source software will continue to grow as viable alternatives both in terms of software, and potentially in analysis and processing.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Future Trends in Global Geospatial Information Management”

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Sepp Hasslberger: Forget WiFi and Radio Waves, LiFi Uses Lightbulbs to Connect to the Internet

Advanced Cyber/IO
Sepp Hasslberger

Forget WiFi and Radio Waves, LiFi Uses Lightbulbs to Connect to the Internet

“One German physicist, Harald Haas, has come up with a solution he calls “data through illumination” – taking the fiber out of fiber optics by sending data through an LED lightbulb that varies in intensity faster than the human eye can follow. It's the same idea behind infrared remote controls, but far more powerful.

“You can imagine all kinds of uses for this technology, from public internet access through street lamps to auto-piloted cars that communicate through their headlights.”

“And more data coming through the visible spectrum could help alleviate concerns that the electromagnetic waves that come with WiFi could adversely affect your health. Talk about the bright side.”

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Howard Rheingold: DeepaMehta — MindMap + Communications

Advanced Cyber/IO
Howard Rheingold

Welcome to DeepaMehta | DeepaMehta

Looks like a more sociable version of Personal Brain — mindmapping plus communication. “DeepaMehta is a software platform for knowledge workers. The special feature of DeepaMehta is the situation-centered user interface: information belonging to one working context is — together with its content associations — displayed and edited in a single window. Whether it is text, images, documents, emails, websites, events or for example contacts.”

Click on Image to Enlarge