Category: Mobile

Communication through voice, sms/text, mobile internet, basic features to mobile touchscreen interfaces, GPS capabilities, and the emerging “augmented reality” features, and mobile projection.

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Journal: Egypt Elections–Muslim Brotherhood Loses, Internet Wins

08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Mobile

Philip N. Howard
Philip N. Howard

Professor and Director of Project on Information Technology and Political Islam

Posted: December 3, 2010 10:57 AM

EXTRACT:

But Mubarak's real enemy is no longer the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a complex, fractured umbrella group, and the practice of faith and opposition to Mubarak may not be enough to hold it together much longer. There is also the Kefaya movement, a loosely organized network of cosmopolitan Nasserites, Islamists, and leftists, that has organized some successful protests but has lost some momentum.

Mubarak's real opponents are tech-savvy activists and wired civic groups.

In the last few years, the internet has become the primary incubator of democratic political conversation. The state has never had this role, and the Muslim Brotherhood is no longer the exclusive provider. Instead, civil society in Egypt has moved online, using the information infrastructure of digital media as the place for difficult political conversations about regime change, gender and political life, and transnational Islamic identity.

This infrastructure is beyond the reach of the state.

Read complete article….

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Journal: Obama’s Blackberry Moment

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Mobile

Dr. Philip NechesDr. Philip Neches

Chairman, Foundation Ventures LLC

Posted: December 3, 2010 01:57 PM

Obama can't catch a break. His Republican opposition gained control of the House, seats in the Senate, and control of more statehouses. He lost big in the center, with both GOP moderates and Blue Dog Democrats dropping like flies. Even the Progressive wing is calling, if not for his hide, for his vertebrae.

How did it get that way? Perhaps there is a clue in one of the Obama administration's earliest decisions. The subject was not a big, profound issue like nuclear arms, health care, or tax policy. It was quite literally a tiny issue: the President's Blackberry.

Read the rest of this article….

Phi Beta Iota: Strongly recommended.  A remarkable account of how Obama gained access to power and lost access to reality.

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Reference: Transparency Killer App Plus “Open Everything” RECAP (Back to 01/2007)

Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Key Players, Mobile, Officers Call, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)

Gregory UnruhGregory Unruh

Director of the Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management at Thunderbird

Posted: December 3, 2010 03:21 PM

Transparency: The Internet's Killer CSR App

EXTRACT: Today “Wikileaks” makes the McLibel case look like child's play. Corporate executives should watch closely as diplomats cringe under the sudden and violent spotlight. The same scrutiny is coming to the corporate world. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has already announced the private sector is his next target. It may be that governments find a way to silence Assange (Wikileaks.org is already undergoing shadowy cyber attacks to shut it down) but it wont stop the wave of involuntary transparency that the Internet provides. Transparency is the Internet's killer CSR app. You can either get out in front of it or fall prey to it.

Read entire post….

Phi Beta Iota: The post is an elegant, concise articulation such as has not appeared elsewhere to our knowledge.  The lines are drawn, all that is lacking is the precipitating factor to launch the revolution.  “Profit Recovery” is going to join “True Cost” as the new meme, but instead of secretive beltway bandits maurading across the health industry–to take one example–it will be the public willfully exposing that which must be restored to the Commonwealth.

See Also: (46 Items):
Continue reading “Reference: Transparency Killer App Plus “Open Everything” RECAP (Back to 01/2007)”

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Journal: Web Archipelago of Babel

Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Methods & Process, Mobile, Real Time, Reform, Technologies, Tools

Jon Lebkowsky Home

Berners-Lee: Long Live the Web

I’ve found myself giving cautionary talks on the future of the Internet, or possible futures, plural – the real danger that the Internet and the World Wide Web that operates on it will become less open, perhaps become fragmented, balkanized into closed networks that no longer cooperate, filled with walled gardens with various filters and constraints, and no longer be a platform with low barriers to entry and assurance that if you connect something, anyone anywhere in the world will have access to it. The Internet would no longer be the powerful engine for innovation and communication it has been.

Tim Berners-Lee, who created the World Wide Web, writes about this in Scientific American, saying that some of the web’s “successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights.”

If we, the Web’s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides.

Read Berners-Lee’s important longer piece, “Long Live the Web.”

My next scheduled talk about the future of the Internet is January 5 at noon, at Link Coworking [Austin, TX].

Phi Beta Iota: The paradigm is power is “rule by secrecy” and fragmentation.  The web and all that suggests for human connectivity is its anti-thesis.  2012 appears to be the year of convergence, confrontation, and emergence.

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Journal: Master Key to the Internet?

02 China, 03 Economy, 10 Security, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Mobile, Real Time

Jon Lebkowsky Home

Are there “master keys” to the Internet?

Interesting article in the New York Times – “How China meddled with the Internet,” based on a report to Congress by the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The Times article talks about an incident where IDC China Telecommunication broadcast inaccurate Web traffic routes for about 18 minutes back in April. According to the Times, Chinese engineering managers said the incident was accidental, but didn’t really explain what happened, and “the commission said it had no evidence that the misdirection was intentional.” So there was a technical screwup, happens all the time, no big deal? Or should we be paranoid?

No doubt there’s a lot to worry about in the world of cyber-security, but what makes the Times article interesting is this contention (not really attributed to any expert):

While sensitive data such as e-mails and commercial transactions are generally encrypted before being transmitted, the Chinese government holds a copy of an encryption master key, and there was speculation that China might have used it to break the encryption on some of the misdirected Internet traffic.

That does sound scary right? China has an “encryption master key” for Internet traffic?

Except it doesn’t seem to be true. Experts tell me that there are no “master keys” associated with Internet traffic. In fact, conscientious engineers have avoided creating that sort of thing. They use public key encryption.

So why would the times suggest that there’s a “master key”?

Phi Beta Iota: We have three thoughts:

1)  There's been a movie on the idea, and a low-rent mind might have been led to use the idea for spin.

2)  Much more seriously, we have been told that many routers strip security as a routine means of increasing speed.  We do not know the truth of the matter, since encrypted emails do arrive with encryption, but as a general proposition, security does seem to have been sacrificed to speed, and it may be there is no need for an Internet key in general.

3)  Finally, we would observe that 80% of signals intelligence is pattern analysis, and being able to pull a massive amount of Internet into a place where pattern analysis of who is talking to who can take place, might, conceivably be worth doing.

See Also:

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Reference: Social Media for Business 101

About the Idea, Articles & Chapters, Collaboration Zones, IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, IO Technologies, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)

Eric Lefkofsky

The New York Times November 17, 2010

A Business Creator Sees Big Returns From Social Media

By DARREN DAHL

Asked to name the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, few people would think of Eric Lefkofsky, who is 40 and keeps a deliberately low profile in his hometown of Chicago. But Mr. Lefkofsky has an impressive entrepreneurial track record, one that recently led Forbes to estimate  his wealth at $750 million.

The first business Mr. Lefkofsky started, StarBelly, made tools for building Web sites; he sold it in 2000 for $240 million. He then started two companies that have since gone public —  InnerWorkings, which provides printing capabilities over the Web, and Echo Global Logistics, a transportation and logistics outsourcing business he founded with a law school friend, Brad Keywell. He also founded MediaBank, which helps companies buy advertising. In each case, Mr. Lefkofsky used the power of technology and the Internet to update an industry.

And then came Groupon, the social-coupon Web site that he bankrolled and started in 2008 with Andrew Mason  —  a venture that has been called the fastest-growing company ever. Groupon offers its followers a deal-of-the-day coupon, sponsored by a local business, that the followers are encouraged to share with their social networks. The local business gets customers, and Groupon takes a share of the coupon proceeds  —  a business model that has led to talk that Groupon, still privately owned, could be worth as much as $3 billion. More recently, Mr. Lefkofsky and Mr. Keywell started an investment fund with $100 million of their earnings. It’s called Lightbank, and it invests only in early-stage technology companies that are built around social media. The following is a condensed version of a recent conversation with Mr. Lefkofsky.

Read full article at The New York Times…

Continue reading “Reference: Social Media for Business 101”

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Journal: Twitter Money To Open Money

11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Mobile, Real Time
Jon Lebkowsky Home

HelpAttack!

by jonl on November 16, 2010

My friend Sarah Vela launched a new company called Help Attack! in August, and it’s proving to be a cool way for nonprofits to raise money, and a clever way for donors to commit money by pledging to give some amount of money for every tweet they post in a month. Sez Sarah, Sez Sarah, “This new way to donate is easy, fun and offers a layer of social responsibility to online activities. We invite all nonprofit organizations seeking new ways to collect funding through year-end campaigns to visit the site, add themselves if they’re not already listed, and share this new way of giving with their supporters.” In addition to the money they’re raising, the nonprofits get more social media visibility via the Twitter connection. Callie Langford, Communications Manager of CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), says HelpAttack! raised awareness of her organization and provided “a no-fuss way for us to receive additional donations, engage with new and old donors, and share details about our upcoming events.” [Link to HelpAttack!]

Help Attack Home

Phi Beta Iota: This is interesting in part because it shows the further development of bottom-up fund-raising at a micro-level; and in part because once the platform is well-established, the way is open to adopt Open Money and cut the banks out entirely.  Facebook is also on its way to becoming a financial exchange without the built-in legalized organized crime.