Category: P2P / Panarchy

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Patrick Meier: Enhanced Messaging for the Emergency Response Sector (EMERSE)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Geospatial, Mobile, P2P / Panarchy
Patrick Meier

Enhanced Messaging for the Emergency Response Sector (EMERSE)

My colleague Andrea Tapia and her team at PennState University have developed an interesting iPhone application designed to support humanitarian response. This application is part of their EMERSE project: Enhanced Messaging for the Emergency Response Sector. The other components of EMERSE include a Twitter crawler, automatic classification and machine learning.

. . . . . . . .

The iPhone application developed by PennState is designed to help humanitarian professionals collect information during a crisis. “In case of no service or Internet access, the application rolls over to local storage until access is available. However, the GPS still works via satellite and is able to geo-locate data being recorded.” The Twitter crawler component captures tweets referring to specific keywords “within a seven-day period as well as tweets that have been posted by specific users. Each API call returns at most 1000 tweets and auxiliary metadata […].” The machine translation component uses Google Language API.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Read full post.

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Michel Bauwens: Amplify Brooklyn – Designing A Sustainable Economy At The Community Level

Culture, Economics/True Cost, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy
Michel Bauwens

Amplify Brooklyn: Designing A Sustainable Economy At The Community Level

EXTRACT:

This fall, graduate students in the Transdisciplinary Design MFA program at Parsons, in New York City, worked with Penin and her co-director, Eduardo Staszowski, to create Amplify, an exhibit currently on display at Brooklyn’s Arts at Renaissance, which demonstrates existing and potential design solutions to local issues related to everyday experience. The project’s aim was to re-think service design in terms of sustainability. Duane Bray, Sarah Soffer and Tom Eich from the design firm Ideo facilitated the Amplify workshop.

Read full article.

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Jacques Ellul: On Technology and Human Morality

Culture, Economics/True Cost, P2P / Panarchy, SmartPlanet
Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul, technology doomsdayer before his time

“People see him as just a bringer of bad news, but the two most important things in his writing aren’t taken into account. One is the comprehensiveness of his explanation of the technological phenomenon. The second is his powerful moral concern. Those two aspects of Ellul’s thought are not as influential as I’d like them to be.”

“Technology becomes our fate only when we treat it as sacred,” says Darrell J. Fasching, a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of South Florida. “And we tend to do that a lot.”

Via Manuel Pinto, Artur Alves

Read full article.

EXTRACT:

His central argument is that we’re mistaken in thinking of technology as simply a bunch of different machines. In truth, Ellul contended, technology should be seen as a unified entity, an overwhelming force that has already escaped our control. That force is turning the world around us into something cold and mechanical, and—whether we realize it or not—transforming human beings along with it.

Phi Beta Iota:  All of these authors overlook the role of corruption — the lack of integrity and intelligence among decision-makers allocating financial resources.  The fact is that technology is like complex financial instruments: a means of defrauding various parties for the benefit of the few.  This is one reason why Open Source Everything must apply to all technologies as well as all financial dealings.

See Also:

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (Vintage, 1967)

Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (Vintage, 1973)

Jacques Ellus, The Subversion of Christianity (Eerdmans, 1986)

Jacques Ellul, Reprint: Money and Power (Wipf & Stock, 2009)

Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred (Peter Smith, 1999)

Kirkpatrick Sale, Human Scale (New Catalyst, 2007)

John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (Vintage, 1993)

Robert Steele, THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust (North Atlantic Books, Evolver Editions, 2012)

Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway (Anchor, 1996)

 

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Reference: Stand Up for a Free and Open Internet

Access, Autonomous Internet, Hardware, P2P / Panarchy, Software, Spectrum
Click on Image to Enlarge

Last week, a group of activists and organizations came together to publish the Declaration of Internet Freedom, a set of principles that make up a vision for a free and open Internet. Groups behind the document include Free Press, Fight for the Future, Public Knowledge, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as others that fought against and helped defeat SOPA/PIPA earlier this year.

Since its launch, the Declaration has attracted a wide range of signees, including orgs like Amnesty International, the Harry Potter Alliance, and Mozilla; as well as individuals like artist/activist Ai Weiwei, musician Amanda Palmer, and Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf. And just yesterday, Rep. Darrell Issa became the first member of Congress to sign the document.

Read the handy infographic below and voice your support for an open Internet by joining thousands of others in signing the Declaration. Then use the EFF's action page to send a letter to your congressional representative asking her or him to join Issa in signing the Declaration. And if you've got ideas for additional principles or any general feedback about the document, you can contribute your thoughts and suggestions on Step2 and Reddit.

Read full post including Declaration of Internet Freedom.

Phi Beta Iota:  Another term of art is “Autonomous Internet.”  A broader term that includes this one is “Liberation Technology.”

See Also:

Autonomous Internet (139)

Liberation Technology (9)

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David Weinberger & Doc Searls: World of Ends What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else.

Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy
David Weinberger

World of Ends

What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else.

EXTRACTThe Nutshell

1. The Internet isn't complicated   .   2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.   .   3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.   .   5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.   .   6. Money moves to the suburbs.   .   7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.   .   8. The Internet's three virtues:   .     a. No one owns it   .   b. Everyone can use it   .   c. Anyone can improve it   .   9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?   .   10. Some mistakes we can stop making already

Read full expansion of the above points.

Phi Beta Iota:  Written in 2003, this essay remains up on the Internet and remains a solid reference for the continuing cognitive dissonance.

See Also:

DuckDuckGo for David Weinberger

DuckDuckGo for Doc Searls

Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder

The Cluetrain Manifesto: 10th Anniversary Edition

The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

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Reference: Jamie Drummond: Let’s crowd-source the world’s goals (TED Video)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, P2P / Panarchy
Jamie Drummond

Jamie Drummond, Executive Director and Global Strategy for ONE, delivers a TED talk focused on the much-debated issue of the Millennium Development Goals. More specifically, he discusses what is to come after 2015 and how the new goals will be determined.

“As we gather here in Edinburgh, technocrats appointed by the UN and certain governments, with the best intentions, are busying themselves designing a new package of goals. And currently they are doing that through pretty much the same old late-20th century, top down, elite, closed process.”

Drummond explains in a ONE blog post:

What’s exciting is that, unlike in 2000 when the first goals were agreed, internet and mobile phones have spread all around the world. People are more connected than ever. So, I’d like to explore how we could use this technology to involve people from around the world in co-designing an historic first: the world’s first ever truly global poll and consultation on “What the World Wants”. Let’s crowd-source the new Millennium Development Goals. I believe that through this crowd-sourcing we won’t just improve the quality of the goals, we will also increase the quality of support for getting the goals done.

In the talk, he lays out the three steps to move the new agenda forward.

Continue reading “Reference: Jamie Drummond: Let's crowd-source the world's goals (TED Video)”