#OSE Open Source Everything – Page 215 – Public Intelligence Blog

OPEN, Force Is.

Open Source Design Tools for Human Rights Activists

Deji Olukotun

Global Voices Advocacy, 25 January 2013

The world's premier human rights organizations often have entire communications teams with dedicated graphic designers to celebrate their work. But not every organization can afford to have a designer. Even those organizations that do have design gurus may decide, for strategic reasons, to keep tight control over their workflow so that they are not bombarded with too many requests. Not to worry! There are several open source design tools that allow anyone to create killer flyers, posters, icons, or campaign—the only limit is your imagination. More importantly, learning basic design allows you to approach your human rights work more creatively and reach audiences with more diverse forms of storytelling.

Open Source programs are different from resources that allow you to use an account for free up to a certain amount, and they do not require you to upgrade or purchase more capacity. When downloading each of the programs below, I recommend that you download the stable version for your platform (this will be clearly marked on the Download site). Stable versions lack the bells and whistles of experimental versions of software, but they won't crash after you've just filled in your thousandth pixel with burnt umber. All of these programs and tools are supported by voluminous YouTube instructional videos and Wikis. Just run a search online.

The Big 3: GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus

Continue reading “Yoda: Open Source Design Tools”

2013/01/262013/02/07

SUBSCRIBERS — What You Can Get…

Crowd-Sourcing

Continue reading “SUBSCRIBERS — What You Can Get…”

2013/01/262013/01/26

Tom Atlee: A society governed by the people’s wisdom…

Politics, Resilience

A society governed by the people's wisdom…

Last weekend I joined a small group exploring the idea that society could have the capacity to generate “public wisdom” and that we could empower that wisdom to support wiser public policy and popular behavior.

Because many people don't know what we mean by “public wisdom”, we clarified that, for the purposes of this inquiry,
the word “public” means that

– the wisdom is generated by ordinary people
– in groups who embody the diversity of their communities
– for the guidance of officials and the citizenry (the whole public)
– regarding public affairs and the concerns of the citizenry
– in forms that are known about and readily accessible to everyone.
and the word “wisdom” means, simply,
– taking into account what needs to be taken into account
– for long term broad benefit.

Evidence suggests that under the right conditions, ordinary people can produce that kind of wisdom on behalf of their community or country. (I explore those “right conditions” in my 2012 book EMPOWERING PUBLIC WISDOM.)

In our gathering last weekend, my colleague Carolyn Shaffer invited me to answer the following question:

“How is life in the public realm better after empowered public wisdom takes hold?”

Her question invited me to assume that a culture of empowered public wisdom had already come about. It was an interesting exercise. I want to share with you my answers. Perhaps they will help you see why some of us are so attracted to this approach to social change.

When I imagine myself in a culture that enables and empowers public wisdom, I imagine a society in which the following are true:

Read full article.

2013/01/25

Yoda: Hybrid Pedagogy — Teaching and Technology

Education, Knowledge

Hybrid, force is.

A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age

Hybrid Pedagogy, 22 January 2013

On December 14, 2012, a group of 12 assembled in Palo Alto for a raucous discussion of online education. Hybrid Pedagogy contributors Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel gathered together with folks from a diverse array of disciplines and backgrounds, representing STEM fields, the humanities, schools of education, corporations, non-profits, ivies, community colleges, and small liberal arts colleges. Among us were adjuncts, CEOs, a graduate student, several digital humanists, and two outspoken educational technology journalists. As a group, we’d chaired online programs, designed MOOCs, dropped out of MOOCs, and the term “MOOC” was even coined in one of our living rooms. The goal of the summit was to open a broader conversation about online learning and the future of higher education. See the story in The Chronicle. This co-authored document, which calls for hacking and open discussion, was the result.

A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age

Preamble

Continue reading “Yoda: Hybrid Pedagogy — Teaching and Technology”

2013/01/252013/01/25

Michel Bauwens: Recommended Reading – Cypherpunks on Freedom and the Future of the Internet

Hardware, P2P / Panarchy, Software

Book of the Day: Cypherpunks on Freedom and the Future of the Internet

Excerpted from a review by Cryptome:

“This is a highly informative book, perhaps the best published on the substance of WikiLeaks, its technology, philosophy, origin and purpose, rooted in the Cypherpunks resistance to authority through encryption and anonymizing technology. The trenchant and salient, wide-ranging discussion among Assange, Appelbaum, Müller-Maguhn and Zimmermann, is derived from a four-part RT series with additional editorial material and a summarizing prologue by Assange, “A Call to Cryptographic Arms.”

It is an excellent introduction to the struggle for control of digital communications, economics and governance. A prime candidate for inclusion of reading lists of the enemies of authoritarian institutions, corporations and governments heavily invested in the Internet and aiming to control it by secret collusion for their purposes — at the global public’s expense, loss of privacy and reduced democracy. It claims to be a “watchman’s warning” against the threat posed by the Internet and cellphone technology.

The panel asserts [11 points in all]:

1. The internet is a threat to human civilization because of its panoptic surveillance and profiling of users.

2. “Strategic surveillance” gathers all online and cellphone data as distinguished from tactical surveillance with is specifically targeted.

Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: Recommended Reading – Cypherpunks on Freedom and the Future of the Internet”

2013/01/22

John Robb: Resilience With Stacked Functionality

Resilience

How Your Home Can Produce MORE With Less

When I walk through my home and around my yard, I'm constantly looking for ways to do more with the space I have available.

More? No, I'm not talking about finding ways to store more stuff by stacking and packing it in every nook and cranny.

Instead, I'm talking about finding ways to produce more in less space.

One of the secrets I've found to producing more, is to stack functionality so that the same space can do many things simultaneously.

Here's an example. Here's ground mounted solar system that a family in Devon, UK had installed (via Chris Rudge). Incidentally, this install is about what a family needs to power their home.

Ground mounted solar panels are often a smart choice, if you have a place to put them for a variety of reasons (cost to performance). However, ground mounted panels deprive you of usable land unlike roof mounted panels.

How do you fix this?

By using the space under the panels as a shed, chicken coop, or other useful structure. Something like this solar shed (via Pete Blanchard):

Can more functionality be added? Sure. You could turn the panels into a rainwater harvesting system, by adding a gutter and a cistern.

You could also turn the shed into a place that houses a battery bank to provide back up power for your house. Or, you could turn the shed into a workshop to use the power produced by the panels to make things you can sell to the world.

Be creative. If you have some ingenious ideas, please share them in the comments below.

Resiliently Yours,
JOHN ROBB

PS: This is a classic engineering technique. It's also something that is used in permaculture design.

PPS: Think about stacking functions serially and in parallel.

2013/01/212013/01/21

Owl: Autonomous Internet with Pirate Box

Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Software

Set Up Your Own Mini-Internet for Free with Pirate Box

The PirateBox is software that can be used to turn your WiFi enabled computer into a local router. It can also be used to make actual “PirateBoxes,” which are stand-alone devices that likewise create a local network. The advantage of a local network, not connected to the Internet, is that you can file share and communicate your way around the draconian restrictions and regulations being increasingly put into place on the Internet.

Tutorial: The PirateBox and Internet Freedom

Other projects similar to PirateBox: Aram Bartholl’s fantastic Dead Drops. Also visit Jason Griffey’s PirateBox fork LibraryBox.

Pirate Box software download via torrent