From 'why?' to 'why not?', the internet revolution | Media The near future of the web is tied up with the logic of present media practice, and the logic of present media practice dates back to Gutenberg's invention of movable type in the mid-1400s. The problem Gutenberg introduced into intellectual life was abundance: once typesetting was perfected, a copy of a book could be created faster than it could be read. Figuring out which books were worth reading, and which weren't, became one of the defining problems of the literate. This abundance of new writing thus introduced a new risk as well: the risk of variable quality. Subsequent centuries saw further inventiveness in media. Though there are obvious internal complexities in this - editing is a type of creation as well as filter - the division of labour was clear: professionals managed the creation and filtering of media, both selecting and improving it; amateurs consumed and discussed it. The internet is, in a way, the first thing to deserve the label "media".
IPhone Public Distrusts Dial-Up Government: Michael Waldman Americans have argued over government’s role since the days when politicians wore powdered wigs. Lately this great debate seemed more like a monologue. Conservatives denounce government with zest. That began to change with Obama’s State of the Union last week, which sketched an appealing picture of government as an engine of economic innovation. We have always been ambivalent about what Thomas Paine called “a necessary evil.” In his landmark 1932 Commonwealth Club speech, Franklin D. Modern conservatism was born, in large measure, to repudiate that view. Threat to Freedom These assaults bit because they came at a time when government seemed unable to meet basic tests, from curbing crime to managing its own finances. Through the years, there have been hiccups and hesitations. All this even though government in the U.S. still is much smaller than elsewhere. Shift Against Government Nonetheless, the public largely buys the Republican critique. Democrat Strategy But he must do much more.
Assemblée nationale : Wikileaks : enquête sur un contre-pouvoir WikiLeaks a livré au regard du public, via Internet et la presse, des milliers de secrets d’Etat. Julian Assange et les hommes de WikiLeaks sont devenus des ennemis officiels du Pentagone. Sont-ils des héros des temps modernes ? Ou des pirates informatiques irresponsables, avides de célébrité ? Luc Hermann et Paul Moreira ont enquêté sur le réseau WikiLeaks, ses forces et ses faiblesses, son mythe et sa part d’ombre… A Londres, Berlin, Reykjavik, Washington et Paris, enquête sur ces nouveaux militants de la transparence qui bouleversent le rapport des citoyens à l’information. Retrouvez également en ligne le débat avec Didier Mathus, François Nicoullaud, Olivier Tesquet et Robert Ménard. Documentaire inédit réalisé par Luc Hermann et Paul Moreira (52’)Coproduction LCP / Premières Lignes
WikiLeaks cables: A guide to Gaddafi's 'famously fractious' family | World news Muammar Gaddafi presides over a 'dysfunctional' family of eight offspring, WikiLeaks cables reveal. Photograph: Sabri Elmhedwi/EPA The leader of the Libyan revolution presides over a "famously fractious" family that is powerful, wealthy, dysfunctional and marked by internecine struggles, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. The documents shed light on how his eight children – among whom rivalries have sharpened in recent years – his wife and Gaddafi himself lead their lives. Muammar Gaddafi The patriarch, now 68, was described by US ambassador to Tripoli, Gene Cretz, in 2009 as a "mercurial and eccentric figure who suffers from severe phobias, enjoys flamenco dancing and horseracing, acts on whims and irritates friends and enemies alike." Safiya (nee Farkash) Gaddafi's second wife travels by chartered jet in Libya, with a motorcade of Mercedes vehicles waiting to pick her up at the airport to take her to her destination, but her movements are limited and discreet. Aisha
Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it. One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days. Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception.
Your Life Torn Open, essay 1: Sharing is a trap This article was taken from the March 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online. The author of The Cult Of The Amateurargues that if we lose our privacy we sacrifice a fundamental part of our humanity. Every so often, when I'm in Amsterdam, I visit the Rijksmuseum to remind myself about the history of privacy. Today, as social media continues radically to transform how we communicate and interact, I can't help thinking with a heavy heart about The Woman in Blue. On this future network, we will all know what everyone is doing all the time. Every so often, when I'm in London, I visit University College to remind myself about the future of privacy. Unfortunately, Bentham's panopticon was a dark premonition. Yet nobody in the industrial era actually wanted to become artefacts in this collective exhibition.
A Campaign to Smear WikiLeaks Supporters Internal documents of a California computer security firm obtained by pro-WikiLeaks hackers have been made available online, suggesting various ways companies can help undermine the whistle-blowing website as it prepares to release material that could prove damaging to Bank of America and other financial entities. A cyber tussle between the hackers, largely grouped under the banner of “Anonymous,” and the California security firm led to the leaked e-mails. It has long been known that Bank of America and other financial institutions are the targets for the next batch of WikiLeak materials due for release. Also check out The New York Times coverage of the news here. {*style:<i>*}{*style:<br>*}{*style:<b>*}Salon:{*style:</b>*}{*style:<br>*}There’s a very strange episode being widely discussed the past couple of days involving numerous parties, including me, that I now want to comment on.
Juan Cole, American Policy on the Brink Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently took a four-day tour of the Middle East, at each stop telling various allies and enemies, in classic American fashion, what they must do. And yet as she spoke, events in Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and even Egypt seemed to spin ever more out of American control. Meanwhile, the regime in Tunisia, one of the autocratic and repressive states Washington has been supporting for years even as it prattles on about “democracy” and “human rights,” began to crumble. In Doha, Qatar, in front of an elite audience peppered with officials from the region, Clinton suddenly issued a warning to Arab leaders that people had “grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order” and that “in too many ways, the region’s foundations are sinking into the sand.” And there, of course, was the rub. The problem: Washington’s foreign-policy planners seem to be out of ideas, literally brain-dead, just as the world is visibly in flux.
Clay Shirky: Society doesn't need newspapers, it needs journalism This is an extract from Clay Shirky's article, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. The full essay can be read here. If you want to know why newspapers are in such trouble, the most salient fact is this: Printing presses are terrifically expensive to set up and to run. This bit of economics, normal since Gutenberg, limits competition while creating positive returns to scale for the press owner, a happy pair of economic effects that feed on each other. For a long time, longer than anyone in the newspaper business has been alive in fact, print journalism has been intertwined with these economics. The competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed by the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then everyone gets to use it. Print media does much of society's heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the city council meeting, just in case. I don't know.
Diplomat Carne Ross Asks: Are the Cables Too Important to Leave to WikiLeaks, the NYTimes, and The Guardian to Sift? I spent yesterday deep in the weeds of WikiLeaks post-mortemizing, first at an invitation-only session run by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, at the Harvard Kennedy School and then in the evening at a jam-packed public event hosted by the Columbia University Journalism School. You can read my live notes from Harvard here and Columbia here. This is what happens, I guess, when you write a quickie book on the topic (pre-order your copies here). I was struck by two things across both events, which featured top editors from the New York Times and the Guardian, and in the case of Harvard, a strong contingent of former top government officials. At best, the Eastern Establishment seems resigned to not being able to prosecute Assange in a serious way, because of how that would also damage more "respectable" journalism, and seems to be hoping this will all go away soon. "Was Tunisia in [our] initial coverage?" Ross concludes with two very important insights:
6 questions sur WikiLeaks, le Napster du journalisme » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism WikiLeaks est-il vraiment transparent? Fallait-il publier les mémos diplomatiques? Nous apprennent-ils quelque chose? Le processus est-il réversible? Assiste-t-on à une évolution structurelle de la société? Près d’une semaine après le début de leur mise en ligne, les mémos diplomatiques révélés par WikiLeaks continuent d’agiter le landerneau politico-médiatique. Transparence = totalitarisme, vraiment? NON. La transparence, ça veut dire qu’il n’y a plus d’intimité, plus de discrétion [...] Quel rapport? Tous ces télégrammes ont été publiés après que les cinq rédactions partenaires (le Guardian, le New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde et El Pais) les aient parcourus, étudiés, contextualisés, vérifiés. Fallait-il publier ces documents? OUI. Mais il y a une seconde question. C’est aux gouvernements, pas à la presse, de garder les secrets tant qu’ils le peuvent, et de s’ajuster vis-à-vis de la réalité quand ceux-ci sont découverts. Nous sommes là dans une zone grise. OUI. NON. PEUT-ETRE.
Tunisian Government Websites Attacked Via DDoS The repercussions of Tunisia’s strict online censorship reached an apex in the Arab country this week as multiple DDoS attacks continue to target the government. Hackers known collectively as the Anonymous group took down at least eight government websites beginning on January 2, according to the New New Internet. In their online manifesto, the group cites government censorship as their primary reason for launching their series of attacks which has brought multiple Tunisian administrative sites this week, including the Ministries site and the Tunisian Industry Portal. “Like a fistful of sand in the palm of your grip, the more you squeeze your citizens the more that they will flow right out of your hand,” the group wrote in the public statement. “The more you censor your own citizens the more they shall know about you and what you are doing.” “Join Anonymous at irc.anonops.ru #opTunisia #OperationPayback” Tunisia’s history of government censorship is and remains prevalent.
Sterft, gij oude journalistieke organisaties 13 januari 2012 | door: Geert-Jan Bogaerts, journalist, blogger, webontwikkelaar en docent aan de Universiteit van Groningen "De meeste journalisten jakkeren liever als een blind paard door op het pad dat ze het beste kennen." Onlangs werd ik door een artikeltje in de Guardian geattendeerd op een essay van Clay Shirky, de Amerikaanse professor die twee van de beste boeken over digitale cultuur heeft geschreven die ik ken. Here comes everybody en zijn opvolger Cognitive Surplus hebben mij veel geleerd over de manier waarop het internet onze economie, onze maatschappij, cultuur en politieke besluitvorming beïnvloeden. Shirky is een optimist – wat aardig aansluit bij mijn eigen levensvisie – en daarom ziet hij de toekomst rooskleurig in. Onheilsprofeten die waarschuwen dat het einde van de wereld nadert, neem je iets minder serieus. Optimalisatie We maken dagelijks een krant, niet wekelijks een magazine. Conservatief Shirky's duidelijke antwoord: nee, tenzij. Radicaliteit binnen een instituut
Leaked Labour email: lay off Murdoch An email, forwarded on behalf of Ed Miliband's director of strategy, Tom Baldwin, to all shadow cabinet teams warns Labour spokespeople to avoid linking hacking with the BSkyB bid, to accept ministerial assurances that meetings with Rupert Murdoch are not influencing that process, and to ensure that complaints about tapping are made in a personal, not shadow ministerial, capacity. The circular, sent by a Labour press officer on 27 January, states: "Tom Baldwin has requested that any front-bench spokespeople use the following line when questioned on phone-hacking. BSkyB bid and phone-tapping . . . these issues should not be linked. It goes on: "Downing Street says that Cameron's dinners with Murdoch will not affect Hunt's judgement. Referring separately to the phone-hacking allegations, the memo states: "We believe the police should thoroughly investigate all allegations. The memo follows a number of recent high-profile interventions from Ed Miliband in the phone-hacking issue.