Category: Technologies

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Event: 12-13 April, MIT campus, Forum on Future Cities

Technologies

Forum on Future Cities hosted by the MIT SENSEable City Lab and the Rockefeller Foundation 12-13th April 2011 | MIT Campus, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Forum on Future Cities will bring together leading thinkers in academia, industry and government from around the world to discuss the most pressing issues of urbanization, and explore how they are being impacted by a wave of new distributed technologies.

Confirmed participants:
Adele Santos, Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, MIT, Anthony Townsend, Technology Forecaster and Strategist, Institute for the Future, Antoine Picon, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Department of Architecture, Harvard, Beatriz Lara, Director of Strategy and Innovation, BBVA, Dennis Frenchman, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT, Frank Jensen, Lord Mayor, Copenhagen, Irving Wladawsky- Berger, Strategic Advisor, Citigroup, Joe Paradiso, Director of Responsive Environments Group, MIT, Jonathan Rose, Founder & President, Jonathan Rose Companies, Mark Spelman, Global Head of Strategy, Accenture, Martin Fleming, Vice President, Corporate Strategy, IBM, Nancy Odendaal, Snr. Lecturer in City and Regional Planning, University of Cape Town, Nicholas Negroponte, Founder & Chairman, OLPC, Nicola Villa, Global Director of Connected Urban Development Group, Cisco, Peter Ong, Head of the Civil Service, Singapore, Simon Giles, Partner, Accenture, Stefan Köhler, Mayor of Friedrichshafen, Thomas Menino, Mayor of Boston

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Worth a Look: Program on Liberation Technology

Academia, Civil Society, Commerce, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Technologies, Worth A Look

http://liberationtechnology.stanford.edu

http://twitter.com/Liberationtech

Lying at the intersection of social science, computer science, and engineering, the Program on Liberation Technology seeks to understand how information technology can be used to defend human rights, improve governance, empower the poor, promote economic development, and pursue a variety of other social goods.

See Also:

Autonomous Internet (36)

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21st Century Magic? Or 1950’s Idiocy on Steroids?

07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Technologies

Richard Wright

This is a follow up to that 13 February Spinney piece on predicting the future, DARPA as Poster Child for Out of Control Budget. It belongs to the category of “we don't make this stuff up.”  Speaking of this category, I think this latest incident in Pakistan (CIA contractor shoots two Pakistanis in broad daylight, CIA SUV going to his aid runs down a Pakistani motorcyclist) ought to be a signal to disestablish CIA.

Phi Beta Iota: FATAL FARCE just keeps on growing.

Algorithm: in computer terms, a finite set of coded instructions directing a computer to solve a specific problem or execute a specific process.

The term ‘algorithm’ is a prosaic word that has taken on an almost occult meaning to hosts of middle and senior managers in the intelligence and military sectors of the U.S. National Security Establishment.

It appears that anyone claiming to have developed an ‘algorithm’ to solve any of the many issues facing those sectors will find a receptive audience and usually a wad of cash to pursue development of that program.

Continue reading “21st Century Magic? Or 1950's Idiocy on Steroids?”

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USA Spectrum Out of Control & Self-Destructing

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, Computer/online security, Corruption, Cyberscams, malware, spam, InfoOps (IO), Military, Mobile, Officers Call, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Standards, Technologies
DefDog Recommends...

Interesting, and if the point about Garmin is true, what is the relationship between them and the Air Force? The Air Force has gotten into a lot of areas that include tracking to the individual level (RFI) under the guise of tracking logistics….

US Air Force raises concerns over LightSquared's LTE network messing with GPS

Following a navigation system's instructions without driving into a ravine is hard enough as it is — can you even imagine how hard it'd be if you kept losing GPS reception every time you drove within range of an LTE tower? There have been a few anecdotal concerns raised over the last several weeks that LightSquared's proposed LTE network — which would repurpose L-band spectrum formerly used for satellite — is too close to the spectrum used by the Global Positioning System, leading to unintentional jamming when the towers overpower the much weaker GPS signals. Things have gotten a little more interesting, though, now that the US Air Force Space Command has officially piped in. General William Shelton has gone on record saying that “a leading GPS receiver manufacturer just … has concluded that within 3 to 5 miles on the ground and within about 12 miles in the air GPS is jammed by those towers,” calling the situation “unbelievable” and saying he's “hopeful the FCC does the right thing.”

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: Electromagnetic conflicts have been a known issue since the 1980's.  The Soviets had emission control standards ten times tougher than the US, which had (and continues to have) virtually no standards at all.  This is one reason why US forces in Afghanistan are so severely hampered, with drones, aircraft, radars, and various other “systems” all interfering with one another.  Elsewhere, notably in England, modern cars come to a complete stop within a  couple of kilometers of certain Royal Air Force emitting stations.  All of this can be attributed to at least four root problems:

1.  An acquisition archipelago (nothing sytematic about it) so stupid and out of control as to defy belief.  No standards, no brains, no integrity.

2.  Service-centric and mission-centric “preferred contractor” and “proprietary single point solutions” standard operating processes that are deliberately not orchestrated with other services, civilian elements of the government, or other nations.

3.  A lack of integrity among senior officers who should know better.

4.  A lack of integrity in Congress, where the focus is on collecting the 5% kick-back from delivered programs, not on actually serving the public interest by insuring affordability, interoperability, sustainability, and utility.

See Also:

Continue reading “USA Spectrum Out of Control & Self-Destructing”

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MIRROR: How to Communicate & Restore Collective Power if the US Government Shuts Down the Internet

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Mobile, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Real Time, Strategy, Technologies, Tools

HOW TO COMMUNICATE IF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT SHUTS DOWN THE INTERNET

02-07-2011 8:48 pm – Wallace

Liberty News Online

Scenario: Your government is displeased with the communication going on in your location and pulls the plug on your internet access, most likely by telling the major ISPs to turn off service.

This is what happened in Egypt Jan. 25 prompted by citizen protests, with sources estimating that the Egyptian government cut off approximately 88 percent of the country's internet access. What do you do without internet? Step 1: Stop crying in the corner. Then start taking steps to reconnect with your network. Here’s a list of things you can do to keep the communication flowing.

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PREVENTIVE MEASURES:

Continue reading “MIRROR: How to Communicate & Restore Collective Power if the US Government Shuts Down the Internet”

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Reference: Wireless Mesh Internet–A List

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Mobile, Real Time, Technologies, Tools
Venessa Miemis

16+ Projects & Initiatives Building Ad-Hoc Wireless Mesh Networks

For those interested in alternative internet infrastructures, I’ve been assembling a list of projects and initiatives working to build mesh network solutions, as well as communities and resources around this topic. I’ve also posted this on Quora. Please feel free to add any projects I’ve missed. We’re hoping to understand the landscape of this initiative and how these projects & communities can better coordinate their efforts, in preparation for the Contact Conference in NYC this October 20, 2011.

Projects:

– Open Mesh Project – building a mesh network for Egypt
– Open Source Mesh – group looking at how to build a reliable open source meshing software
– B.A.T.M.A.N. – better approach to mobile ad-hoc networking; routing protocol for multi-hop ad-hoc mesh networks
– Roofnet – 802.11b/g mesh network in development at MIT CSAIL
– GNUnet – framework for secure p2p networking that doesn not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services
– Dot-P2P – a free, decentralized, and open DNS system
– SMesh – seamless wireless mesh network being developed at John Hopkins University
– Coova – open source software access controller for captive portal (UAM) and 802.1X access provisioning
– Babel – a loop-free distance-vector routing protocol for IPv6 & IPv4
– SolarMESH – solar powered IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN mesh network  and relaying infrastructure solution
– WING – wireless mesh network for next-generation internet; partially built on Roofnet
– Daihinia – a tool for WiFi; turns a simple ad-hoc network into a multi-hop ad-hoc network
– P2P DNS – building a distributed p2p DNS system
– Digitata.org – develop an inexpensive infrastructure (low bandwidth internet terminals) for basic internet exposure to children in African countries
– Netsukuku – an ad-hoc netowork that uses only WiFi connectivity and a specifically-built adddress system that allows direct communications between machines without resorting to the HTTP protocol
– Tonika – open source organic network project; administration-free platlform for large-scale open-membership (social) networks with robust security, anonymity, resilience and performance guarantees

See more links (communities, resources)….

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Internet Freedom–The Public Dialog Continues

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Autonomous Internet, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Mobile, Open Government, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools
Michel Bauwens

SOURCE: P2P Foundation Category:P2P Infrastructure

This is a specialization of our general Technology section, focusing more explicitely on the ‘true internet' or distributed P2P infrastructures.  It is being updated over the next week or so.

On the overall perspective of the P2P Foundation: What Digital Commoners Need To Do, a meditation on the strategic phases in the construction of a peer to peer world

Help us improve our definition of what a true P2P Infrastructure should be: Defining True P2P Infrastructures

Programmatic Statement for the creation of a world-wide user-controlled network based on a distributed architecture, by Raffael Kéménczy

Projects we find worthty of support:

  1. We Rebuild is a cluster of net activists who have joined forces to collaborate on issues concerning access to a free internet without intrusive surveillance
  2. Open Source Mesh Networking projects monitored by Open Source Mesh
  3. Various strategies to achieve Free Fiber to the home
  4. High Priority Free Software Projects: “The FSF high-priority projects list serves to foster the development of projects that are important for increasing the adoption and use of free software and free software operating systems.”

Projects to decentralize/distribute the internet:

Continue reading “Internet Freedom–The Public Dialog Continues”