technology

Social Impact of the Web

If you happen to be in London on 25th May then you may want to attend the RSA special event Social Impact of the Web: Society, Government and the Internet. With speakers Cass Sunstein, Tom Steinberg, Andrew Chadwick, William Davies, Matthew Taylor, Bronwyn Kunhardt, Georgina Henry it promises to be a very interesting day (in addition to this the event is free). Unfortunately I will not be in London so I cannot attend (how annoying) I would very much have liked to have been there.

Here is the text from the advert:

How can new internet technology empower us to interact with each other in novel ways?

This conference will address this question by focusing on the political culture and norms that the internet has been instrumental in fostering, both in relation to centralised politics and more diffuse social and civic networks.

It will also look at the psychology of the internet â?? as we create virtual fully living worlds, lines may be crossed between what is real and unreal in our lives.

Virtual environments let people create their own digital identity with their own unique psychology. When online do we treat people differently, does the technology that we are using change how we would behave in the real world? If people create their own representation what does it say about them and what are the wider implications, social and political.

To book a place at this conference visit http://socialimpact.eventbrite.com/

Location: RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6EZ
Date: 25 May 2007
Time: 10.30am – 4.00pm

Posted on by mklang

Landmines – ban the technology

Certain technological artefacts should never have been designed, manufactured or used. Among these is the landmine. Its horrible impact is not only on the combatants but rather on the civil population which needs to live with the slowly decaying lethal devices for decades after the land was sown with them. Organisations such as the No More Landmines in the UK are working to ban them as legitimate weapons. These organisations need all the support that they can get.

The problem is that people are interested in a conflict while it is active and making headlines. When “peace” is achieved public interest declines considerably. This is unfortunate as the landmines remain. The cost of removing landmines is extremely high and almost impossible to meet for worn torn countries.

So how does one attempt to ensure that people’s interest remains focused on the landmine problem? Well artist & activist Will St. Leger came up with a novel and shocking approach. On Sunday 1st April he placed 100 fake ‘landmines’ made from stenciled metal plates in park around Dublin, Ireland.

Will explains: “The reason for doing this was to get people asking themselves “what if the world I walked in was littered with landmines?” They’re nearly all gone now, the Police took away most of them when a tourist called the emergency number to report ‘Landmines’. Afterwards, I wondered who the people of Laos, Cambodia and Iraq gonna call when they step on real landmine?”

landmines1.jpg

 (via Wooster Collective)

Posted on by mklang

Libraries and Copyright

Copyright has a tendency to make library work difficult. This is a growing trend and many of the larger libraries in the world are struggling to come to terms with copyright issues.

Yesterday the EU’s High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries – which includes, inter alia, stakeholders from the British Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Federation of European Publishers and Google – presented an advisory report on copyright issues to the European Commission.

The group also discussed how to ensure more open access to scientific research and how to improve public-private cooperation. The work of the High Level Group is part of the European Commission’s efforts to make Europe’s rich cultural and scientific heritage available online. For this purpose, the group advises the Commission on issues regarding digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation of cultural material.

Read their Report on Digital Preservation, Orphan Works and Out-of-Print Works, Selected Implementation Issues available here and the annex Model agreement for a licence on digitisation of out of print works available here.

(EU Press Release)

Posted on by mklang

iCommons Summit

The third annual iCommons summit will be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia (15-17 June) and this year I have the good fortune to be able to attend.

The event includes people like Creative Commons CEO, Larry Lessig, CC Chairman and Digital Entrepreneur, Joi Ito, Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales and CTO of Linden Labs, Cory Ondrejka. We have also add some new voices to the debate this year including Indiaâ??s Lawrence Liang who has become renowned for his considered commentary on the positive impact of piracy in developing countries, Jonathan Zittrain discussing themes from his new book â??The Future of the Internet and How to Stop Itâ??, Benjamin Mako Hill from MIT who will talk about competing visions of â??free cultureâ?? from the free software perspective, and Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group, who will talk about successful campaigns to rid the world of restrictive IP laws.

I am really looking forward to it and to meeting all the other commoners. Naturally the event will be blogged 🙂

Posted on by mklang

Stealing Wifi

A man in the UK has been fined £500 and sentenced to 12 monthsâ?? conditional discharge for illegally using someone elseâ??s open wifi (an offence under the Computer Misuse Act see more on note below*). These (one and two) BBC stories gives more information on this but it also includes lots of interesting pre-suppositions about the dangers of open wireless Internet access points.

The main arguments in the BBC stories are that the use of someone elseâ??s wifi is mainly to enter into illegal porn sites, launch hack attacks, to steal information or worse.

Is this really what people try to do on other peoples networks? My experience is that most unauthorized wifi use is travelers checking email, or neighbors using each otherâ??s nets out of sheer incompetence. Naturally there are always going to be nasty people attempting to abuse openness but how bad can it be?

Phil Cracknell has called for an awareness campaign to inform of the dangers of openness â?? â??The perception in the past has been that borrowing a bit of bandwidth is cheeky but not really criminal behaviourâ??. But then again Phil Cracknell is chief technology officer of security firm NetSurity and may be a bit interested in increasing our perception of insecurity.

Most of the people I come into contact with (ok, so I hang with the wrong crowd) donâ??t believe that borrowing bandwidth is cheeky â?? itâ??s a simple act that does not harm anyone.

Using anything for an illegal activity is however illegal and should be punished.

—

* Added 23 April

Stealing wifi is actually an offence under the Communications Act of 2003. To be an offence under the Computer Misuse Act there has to be more than simple wifi use. Basically the Computer Misuse Act requires an unauthorised entry into the computer system. This is similar to Swedish law where “only” using someone’s wifi is not an offence while entering into someone’s system without authorisation is an offence (DatorintrÃ¥ng). This difference is quite subtle and should be investigated further since it could be argued that it is not possible to use wifi without unlawful entry.

Posted on by mklang

Gun Control?

Waking up to the story of the horrible shootings at Virginia Tech which left at least 33 people dead brings back the question of gun control. Obviously there are crazy people everywhere but when they are able to get hold of serious firearms the devastation escalates. The American attitude towards guns has always seemed strange to me. The idea that the second amendment grants the right to bear arms may have been a good thing at some stage but that was in the time of the muzzle loader.

The right to have automatic weapons with armor piercing bullets can not have been what anyone meant. The technology of firepower has evolved beyond the scope of the constitution – how many tragedies must occur before this becomes obvious.

Gun politics on wikipedia and the point of view of the NRA.

Posted on by mklang

HCC8: Social dimensions of ICT policy

The HCC8 will be held in Pretoria, South Africa between 25-27 September 2008. This is a very good conference and I hope to see you all there. This is a really early warning and the website www.hcc8.org has not appeared yet. But here are the important information and dates.

Types of submissions
We welcome contributions such as:
â?¢ Traditional research papers (5000 â?? 8000 words ),
â?¢ Work in progress paper (2000 â?? 3000 words) reporting on ongoing research;
â?¢ Panels (3-5 members).

Important dates
Paper submission deadline: 31 October 2007
Reviewer comments: 15 March 2008
Final camera ready copy due: 30 May 2008

Posted on by mklang

Been Offline

Since I spent the weekend moving I have been unable to go online. Actually my online behavior of late can at best be called erratic. All due to the weekends activities. The tough part about this is not so much getting organised afterwards (which is terrible) but to attempt to catch up on all the reading. My inbox, rss reader and real life reading have piled up in an incredible way. This all makes me feel like Chaplin in the film “Modern Times“.

The lack of time to read is a common complaint. This is also connected to the increase in channels of information pouring in. Some of the choices are easy, while others are tough to lose for nostalgic reasons. Less or no television, skip the daily newspaper, more focused book reading, attempting to focus on one task at a time (rather than multitasking) and generally staying on top of all information flows by not allowing them to pile up.

Was it always like this? Obviously the couple of hundred feeds in my rss is new. How should one cope with the information one wants to maintain without becoming a simplified one-track person? In Republic.com Cass Sunstein writes about the daily me. This is the idea that users will tailor their information needs and ignore all “unnecessary” information. The result can be the creation of groups of outsiders who are unable to relate to their local groups.

Posted on by mklang