Education4site

Voices on the Internet (some shout, some whisper)

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

The Reporters sans frontiéres (Reporters without Borders) revealed this years list of “Internet enemies”. The list is somewhat predictable, but with some interesting changes. Most notable perhaps is Libya, who is now off the list after Gadaffi’s somewhat surprising acceptance of the Internet. Gadaffi has also signed on for the so-called $100 laptop for children in Libya and is even considering buying some for children in neighboring countries.
Meanwhile, the popularity of blogs continues to increase at a flabbergasting rate, and the interesting thing is where they are proving most popular. David Sifry, the man behind Technorati maintains an interesting blog himself where he is chronicling changes in the blogosphere, as tracked by Technorati. His newest report, complete with fancy graphs and all, shows that most blogs are in English, but at a close second and third are Japanese and Chinese. And this even though China enforces one of the strictest censorship policies on the Internet. I guess you could say that while English speakers are shouting louder and louder in the blogosphere, the sheer number of Chinese whisperers is making quite a noise itself.

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Recent news – Internet governance, China-Africa Summit and more

Posted on November 4, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

There seem to be so many things going on these days. Maybe it’s just that time of year or maybe I’m finally awaking from semi-hiatus. Either way, I’m probably going to cover a lot of news in this post.
Two of the more promintent items “du jour” are, of course, the China-Africa Summit and the Internet Governance Forum. Intriguing happenings on both fronts. Both of these, along with other not-as-visible things, underline the types of changes we are seeing, and will continue to see in the near future.
The China-Africa Summit is one more embodiment of what has been talked about for some time now, i.e. the changing relations in the global sphere being brought about by the rise of “new” economic powers, especially China and India. This summit makes it quite clear that China is looking to build economic ties with African countries to strengthen their position (although not only – I was recently at a meeting here in Iceland with a delegation of 30-35 people from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education that were on a world tour stretching right around the globe to build educational and business ties. Talk about thinking big!). Hopefully this is good news for Africa, but there is a justified measure of scepticism concerning the reputation of the benefactor. For instance, it would be great of the budding relationship between Africa and China would result in better telecommunications connections for Africa, but hopefully their use would not be managed the same way China manages its own communications infrastructure.
The Internet Governance Forum is in my opinion very confused. Governance involves the the exercise of authority to manage a consistent societal structure. I don’t see this as being applicable to the Internet as such. The issues that are increasingly being raised under the auspices of “Internet governance”, eg. access,
diversity and basic rights, are not exclusive to the Internet. These are issues that need to be addressed outside of cyberspace. We are not nearly “virtual” yet. Therefore there is no sense in trying to govern a space that is not inhabited, per se. For the time being, Internet governance should focus on the things that we can hope to govern, i.e. technical issues such as interoperability and domain management.
Several different points of view on the Internet Governance Forum’s inaugural meeting.
Another interesting thing worth mentioning:
Potential car of the future?
This is so cool! The sad thing is that it seems that each time one of these breakthrough ideas that will radically change energy consumption emerges, it seems to quietly disappear and things go on as before… (I remember reading about a revolutionary alternative to washing machines many years ago that was said to be on its way to the market shortly – never happened.) They can’t all be bad ideas, can they?

Posted in Development, ICTs, Information Society, Internet | Leave a comment

Internet governance and the Internet Bill of Rights

Posted on November 1, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

An “Internet Bill of Rights” has been proposed at the inaugural meeting of the Internet Governance Forum. While I can see the rationality behind wanting to ensure some basic rights for Internet users, I just don’t see what sort of impact a bill of rights is expected to have. And furthermore, introducing this under the auspices of “Internet governance” underlines how weird (in my opinion) the whole “Internet governance” thing has become.
If my memory serves me right, “Internet governance” became a prominent issue (i.e. if it was around before, not many people were aware of it) around the debate concerning the ICANN’s management of top-level domains and a handful of other fairly obscure technical issues. Most of these issues remain unresolved. Meanwhile, the notion of “Internet governance” seems to have taken on the elasticity of a well chewed wad of bubble gum. All of a sudden “governance” is taken to refer to everything from freedom of speech to basic issues concerning access and multilingualism.
These certainly are real issues worthy of attention, but grouping them with the technical issues that “Internet governance” used to refer to is confusing. At least there are real forseeable ways to resolve the old “Internet governance” issues, i.e. management of top-level domains etc., but these new issues seem to require something of the Internet that just isn’t there.
For example, let’s say that we do draft an Internet Bill of Rights. It’s not difficult to imagine what would be in it, basically the same stuff that’s in the universal declaration of human rights. Maybe in slightly more techy language, or what? Then, who is going to monitor and/or enforce the protection of those rights? And how?
The thing is that, as yet, Internet societies (that’s another problem, there’s not just one) are not separate from terrestrial societies. Yes, individuals may be able to distance themselves to some extent from their terrestrial existence by going on the Internet. But, at the end of the day, they remain tethered to their terrestrial roots and are ultimately subject to the rules and regulations set by the relevant territorial authorities. If those authorities are not willing to acknowledge the political supremacy of an “Internet governance” body, an Internet Bill of Rights is likely to be little more than a noteworthy statement on a piece of paper (or a webpage).

Posted in ICTs, Information Society, Internet | 2 Comments

$100 laptop having an impact on open source communities

Posted on October 29, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

This LinuxWorld article demonstrates several ways in which the MIT Media Lab’s $100 laptop project is affecting open source software development, “Doing it for the kids, man: Children’s laptop inspires open source projects – Network World”
As Negroponte, the “granddaddy” of the project, has said, the project is not a technology project, it is an educational project. The examples illustrated in the article show that, as an educational project, it extends not only to the children that are eventually destined to work with the laptops, but also to developers all over the world, to help them better understand the needs of computer users in developing countries – an important aspect that I’ve hinted at before.

Posted in Development, Education, ICTs, Leapfrogging development | Leave a comment

United Nations University embraces opencourseware

Posted on October 5, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

The United Nations University (UNU), a network of specialised research and knowledge sharing programs, has announced that it has joined the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW Consortium). The OCW Consortium is an initiative which I believe was launched by MIT after they started offering free access to MIT course descriptions, syllabi, reading lists, lecture notes, etc.. Opencourseware is based partly on the notion of open source software, i.e. making courseware freely available for anyone to use for their own learning, as a model for their own courses, etc.. The limitation that MIT has set is that opencourseware does not provide access to MIT teaching staff and can not be used to receive any recognition or qualifications from MIT.
I think it’s great that the UNU is doing this. It is certainly in the spirit of the UN and the ideal of an “information society open to all”. The UNU’s involvement in this initiative may certainly produce an important resource for individuals and organisations the world over. But, I think there is a slight flaw in the current thinking about opencourseware which limits somewhat its potential.
Open source software is based on complex communities that involve themselves in projects for many different reasons. Most importantly, although open source initiatives form around the production of specific artifacts, i.e. the software source code, they are process based, with the primary focus on two processes; knowledge development and making something better (Raymond’s “bazaar” analogy). Not everyone agrees to this description of open source communities (some focus more on the concept of “free/libre”), but I think that this description is the one that has the most significance for other communities interested in integrating elements of open source communities. What is important about open source communities in this regard is the way they work and the tools they use. What I feel is missing from the opencourseware initiative, when I look at the matter from this perspective is, the dynamic change in open source and the tools that make it possible to track changes, what prompted them, who made them, how they were made,. etc.. Imagine if one could track the evolution of a single course over years and across circumstances and read about why one text was replace with another over the years, etc.. I think this would be far more informative than the simple static descriptive resources being made available through opencourseware initiatives.
So, while I applaud the OCW Consortium and the UNU for its commitment to the initiative, I think a lot more could be done with the basic idea to make it even more useful. Things to consider:
Standardised means of describing courseware (open metadata model)

to simplify construction of software for describing and harvesting opencourseware information
Concurrent versioning systems (CVS) for courseware

to be able to compare different versions of related courseware and track its progress
Promote change and encourage sharing (gpl-type license)

if someone makes a change to courseware require them to share it with the community – massive peer review

Posted in Development, Education, ICTs, Information Society, Knowledge development | 1 Comment

The heist of the 21st century

Posted on August 30, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

Now here’s an interesting development (in Icelandic). A player in the game Eve Online, which has a very economical bent, opened a bank and convinced players that they would receive interest on their virtual savings with the bank. After a few months the banker stole all of the money and took off. The amount stolen is 790 billion ISK (the currency in the game – happens to be the international abbreviation for the Icelandic Krona as well – needless to say the game is made by Icelandic company CCP), a very sizable sum of virtual cash.
I recently posted a lengthy blurb about globalization where I wrote about Scholte’s notion of globalization as “supraterritoriality” and how it remains tied to traditional territoriality. But, I also suggested that this may be changing as we see more and more virtual valuables being exchanged. The interesting thing about the Eve Online case is that ISK’s and other virtual valuables are exchanged in the real world. It has been estimated that the money stolen in the game may be worth up to 12 million real ISK (ca. US$175,000). Will the fraudulent banker try to cash in on the crime in the real world or will he/she keep the cash in its more valuable virtual form? If the latter, is there anything territorial about this supraterritoriality?
Update: I guess this news has been circulating on the web for a few days. For versions in english – Slashdot has something on it, as does ArsTechnica.