J. D. Fielder

Academic Earth: Curated Academic Lecture Site

As far as I can tell, Academic Earth is a free service (and "free" is one of my favorite words in the English language):

As more and more high quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education?  At Academic Earth, we are working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.
 
We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.  Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment in which that content is remarkably easy to use and where user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

http://academicearth.org/

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Trendistic Twitter Trend Tracker

A professor who studies Twitter interaction passed this link on to me (also, say the post title fast five times):

"Trendistic is a tool that allows you to track trends on Twitter, similarly to what Google Trends does for Google searches. It gathers tweets as they are posted, filters redundant ones and compiles the rest into one-hour intervals.

 This way, it shows how the frequency of one, two, three and four-word phrases fluctuate over time. The result is a visualization of what is popular and what is not among Twitter users, and how certain events are reflected or even predicted by the microblogosphere."

Trendistic.com

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Wall Street Journal: The Surveillance Catalog

Not sure how long the below link will work for non-WSJ subscribers:

From WSJ.com: Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people’s computers and cellphones, and "massive intercept" gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country.

The documents—the highlights of which are cataloged and searchable here—were obtained from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near Washington, D.C.

The documents fall into five general categories: hacking, intercept, data analysis, web scraping and anonymity. Below, explore highlights related to each type of surveillance, and search among selected documents.

Continued at The Wall Street Journal

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Political Communication Report, Vol 21, Issue 3

Straight from the hallowed halls of the American Political Science Association's Political Communication Section, featuring:

(a) Roundtable: The Flow of Political Information in the Digital Age: What's Better and What's Worse?

(b) Dataset: Prof. Limor Peer shares details about a data archive for experimental studies created by The Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University.

http://www.politicalcommunication.org/newsletter.html

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Fun Stuff: Online "Rain" Soundtrack for Writing and Relaxation

Found this link on Twitter (can't remember the user).  The site plays a continuous rain track for folks who like working or roosting to the sound of rain.  That is, I've let it run for a while and haven't reached an end yet.

http://www.rainymood.com/

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Bit Rebels Infographic: Importance of Real-Time Compression

 

Interesting infographic from BitRebels:

Infographic continues at BitRebels.com

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The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of "Writer's Block"

One of my professors used to have this printed out and taped to his door, and it never failed to inspire a chuckle.  One thing I've never figured out, though, is whether or not it's real.  The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis exists.. perhaps it was a joke meant for internal editorial consumption? I should look it up on JSTOR...

Zoom in to read the fine print. ;-)

On Communication, Mission Statements and the Occupy Movement

For my dissertation, I'm studying information and communication technology (ICT) effects on dissent within authoritarian states. I came up with the idea back in 2008, and must say the Arab Spring came at a good time for my research.  To build my argument, I've read widely in civic culture/social capital, democratization, collective action, state coercion, and computer mediated communication.  No surprise, then, that many existing theories apply just as well to democratic states.

I've poked through the Occupy Iowa City camp several times to see what's going on and drop the random "hello." It's a sedate affair in comparison to larger movements in New York and Oakland. No shouting, no jostling, no police in riot gear--indeed, it's steeped in Midwest politeness and sensibility.  I also have friends participating in, observing, or dismissing movements in New York, Denver, Seattle, Portland, and Eugene. And I follow all of it from the comfort of my recliner, thanks to the wonders of Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds.

ICTs are double-edged, however.  On one hand, the Internet (one ICT facet) is a real time, asynchronous and reasonably cheap communication medium. Indeed, while Web 2.0 tools permit richer experiences (plotting movements on Google Maps is a nice touch), text-enabled cellphones are often sufficient for information flows. ICTs also flatten organizational structures and thus decentralized decision and coordination processes. ICTs also mitigate the tyranny of distance, meaning geographic proximity is no longer a major obstacle.

To the best of my knowledge, the Occupy movement has no single leader, yet all the movement cells appear to function in good working order. Volunteers step up to cook, clean, post to-do lists, organize meetings, process information, and so on without a central headquarters. Thus, the movement captures the best of early American Town Hall politics and the type of civic engagement that makes de Tocqueville smile.

On the other hand, there are significant risks associated with decentralized control/decentralized execution. I must turn to my primary employer--the U.S. Air Force--as a comparison.  One of our mantras is "centralized control/decentralized execution," meaning the commander issues a unified mission intent but gives subordinates wide latitude in pursuing the objective. Under this construct, everyone starts on same sheet of music, and ideally, everyone down to the lowest ranking Airman will know--and can articulate--the objective.  Yet, every units has free reign to maximize their strengths during planning and execution, and can even pursue additional objectives of opportunity during execution.  After the dust clears, units then compile and send after action reviews up the chain of command and the commander uses the reviews to refine or change the mission intent. All in all, an elegant command and control solution for a chaotic environment.

In contrast, I assess the Occupy movement is well organized but poorly articulated. Is there as unified "commander's intent?" As an outside observer, I'll admit I'm not entirely sure what the movement's goals are. So far, I've read a heady mix of statements that punish the banks, big business, the rich, and Washington D.C. I've read calls for tax increases and decreases, wealth distribution, entitlement demands, and my fill of snarky statements scrawled on notebook paper, photographed, and shared on Facebook to generate support, angst, amusement, and schadenfreude. Basically, the noise to signal ratio is so high that I can't draw conclusions. Rather than reading information online, I'd be better off baking cookies for the Iowa City camp and talking in person (a few beers might help, too).

Also, if I may loosely invoke Michel's Iron Law of Oligarchy¹, without centralized leadership, each movement risks forming their own fiefdoms centered on local leadership and local demands. The result would be leadership struggles, a mish-mash of geographically dispersed mission statements, and potential squabbles between different movement locations (so far, though, egalitarianism has the upper hand). The Tea Party runs similar risks, too, but the TP Movement (heh, that sounds bad) appears to have more nationally known names, offices with nice desks, multifunction phones and maroon carpeting, and direct involvement in early presidential fisticuffs. The only big Occupy name that comes to mind is Cornell West, and he's getting arrested too much to articulate a statement. In other other words, there is effort, but not unity of effort.

The result? No one seems to give a s**t about the Occupy movement, except participants and sympathetic observers (to paraphrase Lemony Snicket, movements fail if the suit and slacks people in tall buildings with impressive views don't become patrons). In contrast, the Tea Party demands tribute and gets it. While flash mobs, hash tags and miles of ethernet cable are a nice touch, the Occupy movements at least needs a unified mission statement.

By the way, I lean more towards Occupy than Tea Party. Both share some common ground, though, notably the idea we've been collectively shafted.


¹ Michels, Robert. 1915. Political Parties: A Sociological Study Of The Oligarchical Tendencies Of Modern Democracy. Kessinger Publishing, LLC.  Iron Law of Oligarchy refers to the tendency of all complex organizations, including radical or socialist political parties and labour unions, to develop a ruling clique of leaders with interests in the organization itself rather than in its official aims.

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A Short International Relations View on Leftover Hallween Candy

All the leftover Halloween candy was a collective good; however, my wife divided it amongst the kids, meaning the candy is now a private good (let alone nationalized).

Whereas, in original form, the only risk associated with taking candy was the tragedy of the commons if we couldn't arrive at collective terms, now I'll either be a free rider if I ask nicely or a hegemon if I demand tribute.

Given that it IS candy we're discussing, I expect the kids will take Realist rather than Liberal views of their resources.

Time, then, to signal my credibility...

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