J. D. Fielder

Infographic: Visualizing the Global Digital Divide

I need to post more abstracts! In the meantime, Gregor Aisch at vis4net has a fantastic map of the digital divide, or disparaties between Internet haves and have-nots (note: clicking in the image will take you to Gregor's full post):

If you want to read up on the digital divide, I recommend:

Chadwick, Andrew. Internet Politics: Sates, Citizens, and New Communications Technologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Mossberber, Karen, Caroline Tolbert, and Mary Stansbury. Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003.

Mossberger, Karen, Caroline J. Tolbert, and Ramona S. McNeal. Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.

Norris, Pippa. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

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AP: No Wikipedia? What if the Internet went down?

From AP News. Interesting observation on how lack of online information encouraged Egyptian protesters to meet face to face:

"The government of Hosni Mubarak tried to stop protests in January 2011 by switching off the Internet. The shutdown halted businesses, banking operations and - at the height of the demonstrations - the ability of the protest leaders to organize and communicate with one another.

During the five days that the Internet was out, anti-Mubarak activists had to rely on help from abroad to spread their news and update Web pages. The outage harmed protesters' ability to organize or to counter government propaganda that portrayed them as agents of foreign powers, said Ahmed Saleh, who was in charge of managing the Facebook page that was credited with mobilizing thousands of Egyptians to take to the streets.

With the shutdown, the protests swelled as people unable to follow minute-by-minute what was going on took to the streets.

"No Internet meant that more people went down and realized that this was for real. The protests grew, and so did the anger against the government domestically and internationally," Saleh said."

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(Video) The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?

Been reading and writing my @$$ off to get my dissertation prospectus done! Hope to defend the prospectus ~17 January.

Anyways, have an interesting video for you, courtesy of one of my professors:

"Does the internet actually inhibit, not encourage democracy? In this new RSA Animate adapted from a talk given in 2009, Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' - the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.
 
Exposing some idealistic myths about freedom and technology (during Iran's 'twitter revolution' fewer than 20,000 Twitter users actually took part), Evgeny argues for some realism about the actual uses and abuses of the internet."

 

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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Bit Rebels Infographic: Importance of Real-Time Compression

 

Interesting infographic from BitRebels:

Infographic continues at BitRebels.com

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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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Timeu.se: Tracking Reported Time Usage on Twitter

Well, THIS looks like a handy tool! A little something that @redlog at Cornell University put together:

"timeu.se is a web tool for investigating how millions of people report spending their time. This is done by collecting and aggregating millions of messages from Twitter.

Some people say that Twitter conversations are "pointless" or "babble" or that people tweet about "what they had for breakfast." But if you think about it, most casual conversations are just as inconsequential — we just don't record them forever on the web!

I think it's great that people tweet what they had for breakfast, or that they're stuck in traffic or are mowing the lawn. Because what sociologists have always wanted to be able to do is get very detailed measures of how people spend their time without bothering them too much by asking them. Now, by simply examining the conversations that they're having in public, we can do it without bothering them at all!"

Give it at a whirl at http://timeu.se/

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The Netizen Report

First edition of The Netizen Report, a new series at Global Voices Advocacy:

"This is the first post in a new series on GVA called “The Netizen Report”: A regular overview of recent global developments related to the power dynamics between citizens, companies and governments on the Internet. I hope that these regular reports can provide netizens around the world with useful information about who is seeking to influence and shape the digital platforms and networks we increasingly depend upon, and how.

Armed with information, we are in a better position to defend our rights, and to make sure the Internet evolves in a manner that is compatible with free expression and dissent. The format and content of the report will evolve over the coming months based on reader feedback and author experimentation."

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Libya and Armchair Social Media Analysis

21 August 2011 was my daughter's 17th birthday. It was also the day Libyan rebels poured into Tripoli and sent Qaddafi skulking off to a currently undisclosed hidey hole.

Thanks to the latter, I burned the hamburgers. I couldn't break away from the real-time Libya updates. Couldn't, I tell you. I ran back into my office one too many times for another hit at the Twitter pipe, and before you know it the burgers were on fire (I thought they tasted fine, but the wife still beat me over the head with a rolled up newspaper).

For an old intel junkie like me, watching a crackpot regime unravel in real time from the comfort of my favorite chair was a splendid afternoon's entertainment. I had tabs open for Twitter, a Tripoli Google Map with attacks geolocated, a Sky News audio stream, and a separate twitter tab dedicated solely to a gentlemen posting open-source signals intelligence (tracking flights around the Mediterranean). I even did my best to contribute "new" information to the stream, although I couldn't verify everything I found. If beggars could be choosers, I'd of loved to have had an order of battle chart on the Libyan military, since at one point there was concern Qaddafi would launch ambushes on rebel rear areas.

In sum, social media and broadband Internet gave me access to sufficient open source information that I could build an operational picture of battlespace. Five to ten years ago I'd of needed on-the-job classified sources to do so.

But, with almost a week's distance between me and the rebel offensive, I've had time to reflect on what real-time access actually meant at the time. First, for me it was entertainment--a dopamine squirt in the brain for every rebel victory sign. But what barbaric entertainment it was: people dying, hospitals filled with the wounded, the heady scent of victory tainted by the acrid smell of burning tires, spent rounds, and the fear of locals trying to evade gunfire. And there I was, popping open a "Fat Tire" in between Twitter updates. Keeping score on social media makes one forget that gunfire isn't a sport. A Tripoli hospital photo spread in yesterday's print New York Times certainly brought me back down from the social media ether.

Next, information access made me feel as if I was there, in downtown Tripoli, a rebel standing against Qaddafi and his crazy 1970's hair. But let's get serious: I did nothing but act as a conduit of information for other chair-bound observers. Access to real-time information from multiple sources simply created the illusion of in-person participation; an illusion broken when I disconnected from the datastream to take my daughter's birthday cake out of the oven (thankfully, the cake turned out perfect).

Finally, as @acarvin, @blakehounshell, @timmathews, and others observed, how much of the information was truly new, let alone valid? Choking layers of rumor and exaggeration are seious pathologies of real-time intelligence gathering. Sources aren't verified, words such as CONFIRMED are applied liberally to make information sound factual. Spend enough time in front of the fire hose, and you'll learn to separate the wheat from the chaff; however, how many users have the time, training and experience to do so? I'll put it this way: I'm a professional geopolitical analyst, yet I undoubtedly retweeted information of dubious legitimacy. It's simply too easy to get swept up into the stream, where subjectivity is far more fun than objective and critical judgment.

Still, I prefer open access and its associated interpretive risks over informational blind spots. Next time, though, I should probably take my laptop with me to the deck instead of running in and out with my spatula.

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Infographic: Chronological History of Computers

Preview of an interesting infographic over at Bitrebels:

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