Twitter against Tyrants: New Media in Authoritarian. Digital Diplomacy - NYTimes.com. Diplomacy in a Digital World - Alec Ross - The Clinton School Speaker Series - Inspiring Ideas and Action. Alec Ross serves as Senior Advisor for Innovation in the Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In this role, Alec is tasked with maximizing the potential of technology in service of America’s diplomatic and development goals. Prior to his service at the State Department, Alec worked on the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team and served as Convener for Obama for America's Technology, Media & Telecommunications Policy Committee.
In 2000, Alec Ross and three colleagues co-founded One Economy, a global nonprofit that uses innovative approaches to deliver the power of technology and information about education, jobs, health care and other vital issues to low-income people. During his eight years at One Economy, it grew from a team of four people working in a basement to the world's largest digital divide organization, with programs on four continents. Alec started his career as a sixth grade teacher in inner-city Baltimore through Teach for America. Digital Activism in China: A Discussion Between Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey and Richard MacManus. Earlier tonight, the Paley Center hosted a discussion about social media and digital activism with celebrated artist, architectural designer, activist and blogger Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and ReadWriteWeb’s editor and founder Richard MacManus.
The discussion touched upon a large variety of topics related to social media and digital activism in China, including translating Twitter into Chinese and Google’s exit from the Chinese market. Jack Dorsey joined the conversation via satellite from San Francisco. The conversation was moderated by Emily Parker, the Arthur Ross Fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S. -China Relations, who is currently working on a book about China and the Internet. To start out the discussion, MacManus pointed out that it was the read/write aspect of the Internet that spawned the growth of social networks like Facebook and Twitter over the last few years. Les 65 000 concurrents de l'Icann. CERI - Manifestations. Roadblocks on the Information Highway. Freedom.gov - By Evgeny Morozov.
A year ago this January, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the stage at Washington's Newseum to tout an idea that her State Department had become very taken with: the Internet's ability to spread freedom and democracy. "We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance democracy and human rights," she told the crowd, drawn from both the buttoned-up Beltway and chronically underdressed Silicon Valley. Call it the Internet Freedom Agenda: the notion that technology can succeed in opening up the world where offline efforts have failed. That Barack Obama's administration would embrace such an idea was not surprising; the U.S. president was elected in part on the strength of his online organizing and fundraising juggernaut.
A year later, however, the Internet Freedom Agenda can boast of precious few real accomplishments; if anything, it looks more and more like George W. But the Internet Freedom Agenda's woes extend far beyond a few botched projects. Evgeny Morozov's Books interview with The New Statesman. Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director » Blog Archive » Are We Ignoring the Dark Side of the Internet? Evgeny Morozov at LSE (Guest blog) This report on a lecture at the LSE by Evgeny Morozov is by POLIS intern, Beth Lowell. From discussions of Iran’s “Twitter Revolution” to praise for Google’s decision to stop its censorship in China, the Internet is often heralded as a vital tool for democracy. The United States government in particular has long referred to the Internet as a beacon of hope, a great equalizing tool that has the potential to spread democratic practices across the globe by making information available to all.
However, in his book The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World, Evengy Morozov steps back from the glow of all this Internet hope and optimism to ask: aren’t we missing something? During his LSE public lecture, Morozov opened with a confession: he used to be an Internet optimist too. A native of Belarus, Morozov was initially drawn to Internet idealism but was quickly disheartened when he saw that his work with NGOs and as a blogger was not, in his opinion, making much of a difference. The Inside Story of How Facebook Responded to Tunisian Hacks - Alexis Madrigal - Technology. The social-media site's security team talks to The Atlantic -- revealing key details about a revolution that could become a parable for Internet activism. It was on Christmas Day that Facebook's Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan first noticed strange things going on in Tunisia. Reports started to trickle in that political-protest pages were being hacked.
"We were getting anecdotal reports saying, 'It looks like someone logged into my account and deleted it,'" Sullivan said. For Tunisians, it was another run-in with Ammar, the nickname they've given to the authorities that censor the country's Internet. They'd come to expect it. In the days after the holiday, Sullivan's security team started to take a closer look at the data, but it wasn't entirely clear what was happening. Ammar was in the process of stealing an entire country's worth of passwords. Here's what's at stake. But it wasn't just videos that people were sharing. Does Facebook have to go the extra mile to support activists?
“L'’Internet civilisé”, histoire d’un concept à géométrie variable. Foreign Policy: The Politicization Of Digital Space. Google search: Political power - POLITICO.com Print View. Google’s aggressive tactics have put it on top of the business world, and now the Internet giant is looking to leverage the high profile and sterling connections of its CEO to achieve similar power in the political sphere. Google boss Eric Schmidt is one of the nation’s most politically active business leaders — a man who uses the cachet of the company he leads, as well as his own charisma, to build strategic alliances in the Obama administration and on Capitol Hill. Schmidt, 55, grew up in Washington and returns frequently to visit his mother, who still lives in Northern Virginia.
Those trips often double as chances to meet with President Barack Obama, chat with staffers at the Federal Communications Commission and meet with top lawmakers. Schmidt’s newly formed friendships in town have helped transform Google from a D.C. outsider into an Obama administration darling with growing clout in policy circles. In 2009, Schmidt gave $1,000 each to Reps. The Digital Disruption. The advent and power of connection technologies -- tools that connect people to vast amounts of information and to one another -- will make the twenty-first century all about surprises. Governments will be caught off-guard when large numbers of their citizens, armed with virtually nothing but cell phones, take part in mini-rebellions that challenge their authority.
For the media, reporting will increasingly become a collaborative enterprise between traditional news organizations and the quickly growing number of citizen journalists. And technology companies will find themselves outsmarted by their competition and surprised by consumers who have little loyalty and no patience. Today, more than 50 percent of the world's population has access to some combination of cell phones (five billion users) and the Internet (two billion).
These people communicate within and across borders, forming virtual communities that empower citizens at the expense of governments. Don't have an account? Google's arrogance presages a mighty fall | Nick Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer. Google's corporate slogan – "Don't be evil" – has always bothered me. No one should "be" evil, of course. But why did Google need to spell out its determination to avoid Satan and all his works with such vehemence? When a husband declares to his wife that he would never dream of taking a mistress, or a chief executive interrupts a board meeting to announce that she isn't embezzling the company's funds, the audience is entitled to wonder if they're listening to the voice of a guilty conscience. At present, hundreds of millions of people find the idea that Google could be evil unthinkable. To be fair, Google does have touches of nobility. If its executives could have been at the Commons hearings into Google Street View last week, they would have learned that MPs at least understand the dangers.
Hearteningly, they are as prepared to protest against invasions of privacy and breaches of property rights by corporations as by the state. Even as it was first sold, Street View was an intrusion. Generation Why? by Zadie Smith. The Social Network a film directed by David Fincher, with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier Knopf, 209 pp., $24.95 How long is a generation these days?
I must be in Mark Zuckerberg’s generation—there are only nine years between us—but somehow it doesn’t feel that way. This despite the fact that I can say (like everyone else on Harvard’s campus in the fall of 2003) that “I was there” at Facebook’s inception, and remember Facemash and the fuss it caused; also that tiny, exquisite movie star trailed by fan-boys through the snow wherever she went, and the awful snow itself, turning your toes gray, destroying your spirit, bringing a bloodless end to a squirrel on my block: frozen, inanimate, perfect—like the Blaschka glass flowers.
At the time, though, I felt distant from Zuckerberg and all the kids at Harvard. ERICA: I have to go study. MARK: You don’t have to study. ERICA: How do you know I don’t have to study?! MARK: Because you go to B.U.! Oh, yeah. Google and Money! by Charles Petersen. Googled: The End of the World As We Know It by Ken Auletta Penguin, 384 pp., $27.95 The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr Norton, 276 pp., $26.95 Google plays such a large part in so many of our “digital lives” that it can be startling to learn how much of the company’s revenues come from a single source.
Google Search, Gmail, Google Chat, Google Voice, Google Maps, Google Documents, Google Calendar, Google Buzz, Google Earth, Google Chrome, Google Reader, Google News, YouTube, Blogspot, Google Profiles, Google Alerts, Google Translate, Google Book Search, Google Groups, Google Analytics, and Google 411. Yet few of these services support themselves (YouTube alone has lost hundreds of millions of dollars per year). The reason Google’s search engine remains its single largest source of revenue—and why that revenue exceeds that of any other website—can most easily be understood by studying the company’s history. Hence the emphasis on “page views.”
Facebook could gain from foreign ownership. Reuters reported that Goldman Sachs will only allow non-US investors to take part in a private placement of Facebook shares because of "intense media coverage" in the US. Felix Salmon explains why in his column: Analysis & Opinion | Because of the media coverage Goldman could be accused of "front running their own private market" to evade securities laws.
One question is did Goldman mismanage the deal or is it part of a plan to make sure Facebook gets a large foreign shareholder base? Facebook would certainly benefit from not being seen as a totally US owned company. And as the Internet becomes more important to every country's economy then vital services such as search, social networking, DNS, come under scrutiny and there is a trend towards local substitutes. Russia and China are good examples of where local "me-too" Internet companies have gained over larger, longer established US brands. Peacebuilding-in-the-Information-Age-Sifting-Hype-from-Reality. Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov.
In his new book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Evgeny Morozov aims to prick the bubble of hyper-optimism that surrounds debates about the Internet’s role in advancing human freedom or civic causes. Morozov, a native of Belarus, is a tremendously gifted young cyber-policy scholar affiliated with Stanford University and the New America Foundation. He’s an expert on the interaction of digital technology and democracy and writes frequently on that topic for a variety of respected media outlets.
In Net Delusion, as with many of his previous columns and essays, Morozov positions himself the ultimate Net “realist,” aiming to bring a dose of realpolitik to discussions about how much of a difference the Net and digital technologies make to advancing democracy and freedom. His depressing answer: Not much. Indeed, Morozov’s book is one big wet blanket on the theory that “technologies of freedom” can help liberate humanity from the yoke of repressive government. Conclusion. L'Arabie saoudite dément vouloir contrôler les blogueurs. Googling Africa - By Dayo Olopade. The Google office in South Africa is no different from the Google office in Washington -- from the outside. Tucked into a sprawling, high-tech office park in Johannesburg, Google's hip, young Africa team has taken the company's beanbag-chairs-and-jeans culture global.
But in practice, their mission is different -- and far more difficult. They're out to prove that Google can be an African verb. Since 2007, the American search giant has entered the African market head first, establishing offices in Lagos, Accra, Johannesburg, Dakar, and Kampala, with its largest presence in Nairobi. It has placed a premium on improving access to the Internet and importing its well-known suite of applications (Maps, Gmail, Books, Chat) to African users.
It has held six "G-Africa" gatherings designed to build the brand among local webheads, most recently in Kenya, with another planned for Cape Town in November. When it comes to Western tech companies, Google is unmistakably ahead of the curve. PdF EU: Personal Democracy Forum. Twitter Musings in Syria Elicit Groans in Washington. ACTA. Dissertation.
Click here for full list of Publications Do “Liberation Technologies” Change the Balance of Power Between Repressive StateS AND CIVIL SOCIETY? Dissertation Committee:Dan Drezner, Larry Diamond, Clay Shirky, Carolyn Gideon Do new information and communication technologies (ICTs) empower repressive regimes at the expense of civil society, or vice versa? For example, does access to the Internet and mobile phones alter the balance of power between repressive regimes and civil society? The first half of this doctoral study comprises a large-N econometric analysis to test whether “liberation technologies” are a statistically significant predictor of anti-government protests in countries with repressive regimes. My dissertation is available for download here in PDF. Main Contributions and Highlights: * New dataset on protests, ICTs, political and economic variables over 18 years. * New econometric analysis and contribution to quantitative political science.
Like this: Like Loading... Digital Agenda - Europa Information Society. Innovator Alec Ross Joins State Dept. Clicktivism is ruining leftist activism | Micah White. A battle is raging for the soul of activism. It is a struggle between digital activists, who have adopted the logic of the marketplace, and those organisers who vehemently oppose the marketisation of social change. At stake is the possibility of an emancipatory revolution in our lifetimes. The conflict can be traced back to 1997 when a quirky Berkeley, California-based software company known for its iconic flying toaster screensaver was purchased for $13.8m (£8.8m). The sale financially liberated the founders, a left-leaning husband-and-wife team.
He was a computer programmer, she a vice-president of marketing. The trouble is that this model of activism uncritically embraces the ideology of marketing. Clicktivists utilise sophisticated email marketing software that brags of its "extensive tracking" including "opens, clicks, actions, sign-ups, unsubscribes, bounces and referrals, in total and by source". FR Doc 2010-5023. Surfing the Surfer. Internet as Diplomat in 21st Century Statecraft. Public Diplomacy 2.0. Washington Taps Into a Potent New Force in Diplomacy - NYTimes.c. U.S. Web Firms Practice Self-Censorship. Losing our minds to the web – Prospect Magazine « Prospect Magazine. How Social Media Can Change The World (SACC, april 2010) « Marti. Internet has changed foreign policy for ever, says Gordon Brown. The Internet and Political Change in Kuwait. Google Searches for a Foreign Policy.
Foreign Policy: Africa's Internet Threat.
Academics - Think Tanks. Books. Blogs and Bullets. Debate Shirky / Morozov. Digital Diplomacy. US Public Diplomacy 2.0. State Department's Delegations 2.0. Hillary Clinton's Speech on Internet Freedom. Internet Governance. Public Diplomacy. Authoritarian Regimes & the Web. Blogs and Bullets: Evaluating the Impact of New Media on Conflic. CFR's papers & podcasts. On China. U.S. Web Firms Practice Self-Censorship - Newsweek.com. The Digital Divide in the Muslim World. Google implicated in the Orange Revolution. Technology for diplomacy: A chat with State's Alec R. Diplomatic Efforts Get Tech Support - washingtonpost.com.
The Next Diplomatic Cable | The American Prospect. Gov 2.0 | Oxford Int. Facebook Diplomacy. Stanford Social Innovation Review : Opinion Blog : Twitter Diplo. 'Twitter revolutionized Israeli diplomacy' - Haaretz - Israel Ne. Diplomacy 2.0 | Is Google Making Us Stupid? - Magazine.
Internet and Democracy - Miller Center of Public Affairs.