theNetwork

I forgot to mention, I found a neato webpage that allows you to visualize the network of links (a la google.com) coming from a site. And yes, it's stretchy and moves in that oh-so-satisfying java way. Also, try double clicking to expand the node out farther. I used the course blog page to give you an idea.
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

Second, I found a gem while looking up the del.isio.us link for the above site. Ha!
It's a blog ( link) discussing google Earth's ability to geo-tag content. Then while you move around in the Google Earth application you can see content based upon it's tagged location. Flikr was what I check out, so you can see where photo were taken and it kind of serves as a close up (with personalization.) Let me try not to go into the possibilities... but imagine browsing a network of content based on geotagging. It's a whole other potential internet. A million photos of a landmark... a hundred blog entries about a restraunt.
Plus, you can find places where nothing digital has happened and then escape to them.

Wk7 Extra Reading (eSociety)

Blakemore, M. and Dutton, R. "e-Government, e-Society and Jordan: Strategy, theory, practice, and assessment." Available online at: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_11/blakemore/index.html.

Here is a PDF of this blogpost: http://kegill.typepad.com/com546/files/Josh_Lind_eSociety.pdf

This blog post is to summarize the reading for use in class discussion.
To 'get' this article just consider the meaning of this statement: "promoting universal service access rights to the e-Society." Maintain the mantra: "means, but not an end."

Document Outline

Introduced ideas ::
1. Localized strategy
2. Developed vs. developing
3. The debriefing process
4. East vs. West
5. Culture

Society ::
- Technology and change
- Post-industrial or knowledge society
- Information and e-Government
- Moving money, moving the economy, digitized

Technology ::
- Developing enabled, developed ahead.
- Classic gains
--- G > C
--- G > G
--- G > B
--- Digital utopia

Research ::
- Strategies, complex (non-linear) process
- Timelines
- Political newness
- Political crap
- Necessity and digital colonialism
- who is benfited question again

Re-org ::
- International agenda
- More from government, more from citizens?
- Individual habits

Democracy ::
- Local identity, centralization
- Online rights
- Global identity
- Knowledge access and reality

The Great Devide ::
- Western teleology
- Intellectual property, digital herdle
- Reinvention
- Global reputation
--- Local divides
- Literacy
- Literacy+Technology=Sucess?
- Cultural gender bias, and ability, translates to biases empowerment
--- Gendered needs
- Taboo content
--- (the one thing all cultures agree about the net: no child porn)

Disintermediation (article buzz word) ::
--- (ditigally eliminate the 'middle-man')
- No stores
- No civil servants
- Technology vs. process, ability vs. need
- Easy digital presence
--- Minority (& culturally slighted) empowerment
--- Watch dogs
--- Educational access
- Cultural bias in such easy existing content

Communuity ::
- Sociological implications
- Stability
- Community buzz
- Pre-existing communities and content
- Expectations

Information rights ::
- Access
- Quality analysis & measurement (too new)
- Transparency
- Obligation (gov)
- Security
- Trust of governemental technology
- Global trend analysis
- Metrics to politicians

Overall ::
- Complex sociology of tech in complex global theatre
- Effective utilization
- Local vs. national
- Ethnographic use

Most comprehensive quote: "... if e-democracy is to develop into an integral part of representative democracy, mechanisms for promoting public deliberation, embedding it within the constitutional process and demonstrating real links between public input and policy outcomes need to be devised. Public expectations need to be managed: e-democracy should not be seen as a recipe for direct democracy or technopopulism."

Wk7 Extra Reading (Netizens)

Hauben, M. "The Net and the Future of Politics: The ascendancy of the Commons" In Netizens: An Anthology. Available online at: http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x14.

What are your experiences with electronic government or eDemocracy; how would you rate them? Is this evolution good or bad, and why?

This article falls fully into the category of standard Internet democracy idealist visionary. It calls out all the classic possibilities (and I do appreciate the Mill, even if it was dad.) In the utilitarian tradition there is a belief that with the right tools we can quantify and categorize our way to societal perfection. If we are to achieve that science fiction socialist vision that we see so often in fiction, then I suppose the democracy of the Internet is an important step.

I must share a Bjork lyric with you: "I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me." (from Hunter, off Homogenic)

My e-government experience... It has consisted of researching a bit before I vote and of course the ever popular modern concerned citizen trend of emailing your congressman. I have a good friend who has been involved in state level politics for a while. He worked for a politician signing responses to letters. These were physical letters. We know how much easier it is to do this electronically... in fact automatic. Just have the computer wait a week and it might even look like they read it. Anyhow, I assume that at most my email amounted to a TALLY on some list. So mark me down for ending the Iraq conflict. I'll accept my one tally mark... on one list... in front of one congressman... representing one state... in the minority. eDemocracy couldn't be healthier.

Wk7 Reading (1968)

Hardin, G. "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science Magazine (1968). Available online at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243.

How does the theory of the commons relate to the Internet, community, or politics?

First of all, a brilliant classification: "no technical solution problems."
Second, channel Whitehead in the definition of 'tragedy': “The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.”

Key sentence: "Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

This article has a pessimistic ring, but in all honesty when it comes to mathematics you can't share a finite resource with infinite growth. This article implies that we are on a precipise, which seems to be a running theme of all time. I find it incresingly difficult to figure out which sky is actually falling.

"the cost of the waste... discharge[d] into the commons is less than the cost of purifying."

Upon the issue of over population and the contious choice to reduce the problem, here are some brilliant Darwin words. Even if the instinct to breed less increased among the conscious, "nature would have taken her revenge, and the variety Homo contracipiens [who get it] would become extinct and would be replaced by the variety Homo progenitivus [those who don't].”

And lastly, maintaining the status quo is an action, it is a decision. When this is realized, one can way it's appeal to that of an alternative and bam... pragmatist change.