Twitter Still Dominated By Noisy Minority, Study Finds

Twitter Still Dominated By Noisy Minority, Study Finds:

"Though Twitter has around 200 million users, the report found that 50% of tweets (there are around 140 million sent each day) are generated by 20,000 'elite' users, or less than .05% of all users. A 2009 Harvard study drew a similar conclusion, reporting that just 10% of Twitter's users produced 90% of the service's tweets."

CULT OF THE DEAD COW: cyberpunk is dead

CULT OF THE DEAD COW: cyberpunk is dead:

"Being a progressive participant of cyberspace today is not about being elite and surfing the most underground hubs. It’s about surfing on the top of it all, on the big normal junkyard of human creation and picking up the inspirations together. It’s also about reading a book again, following an author’s thought through 400 pages instead of 140 letters. And also in the same sense: doing a website again, a static thing that waits for hundreds to come by, just like a book in the library, instead of giving daily updates to attract some other thousands that need their daily fix of info. Some books still are more actual than the daily news reports (when these were still existing, now the news must be updated all the time). And maybe the lost dreams in these books need an actualisation through a website, instead of just a quotation in the fast streams of actualities. It’s about refusing the entertainment, it’s about finding enlightment in thought processes themselves and not in what forms they have been given for representation. It’s about picking up something dead and giving it life instead of living the perpetual death of the bubble of statements."

5 Reasons Why Android is Becoming the Go-To Mobile Device for Activists | Movements.org

5 Reasons Why Android is Becoming the Go-To Mobile Device for Activists | Movements.org:

"Android, the open-source mobile operating system developed by Google, is quickly becoming the smartphone of choice for activists. It’s growing in popularity around the world, recently becoming the number two smartphone in the world behind Nokia’s Symbian operating system and outranks the iPhone in the U.S. Here are 5 reasons why Android should be on any activist's radar.

1. More Possibilities with Open Source

Android is an open-source platform, meaning that the source code is accessible to anyone, allowing for developers to create apps that extend the functionality of devices. With closed platforms like Apple’s iPhone, on the other hand, the manufacturer and/or network have much more control over what users can do with their devices."

False Fear: Cyborgs Instead of CEOs | OurFuture.org

False Fear: Cyborgs Instead of CEOs | OurFuture.org:

"The nightmare for far too many is Cyborgs. The public fears HAL, the 2001 Space Odyssey computer that killed astronauts rather than forfeit its objective.

So terrified of the sentient machine, citizens overlook the allegory. The soft-spoken, reasonable-sounding HAL behaves exactly like a greed-driven, multi-national corporation. The corporate mission is profit. With 29 workers massacred in a Massey mine explosion and 11 slain in the BP oil rig explosion in just one month last year, greedy corporations have shown they’re willing to kill rather than forfeit their profit objective."

Content farms: What do they say about what we care about? - By Annie Lowrey and Angela Tchou - Slate Magazine

Content farms: What do they say about what we care about? - By Annie Lowrey and Angela Tchou - Slate Magazine:

"Content farms are to online media what tabloids are to print. Neither journalism nor advertising, they are a trashy and addictive product, sussing out what we really want in order to give us something we don't really need—and, in so doing, telling us something important about ourselves."
...

"So what more do we know about the content farm from running through the database? It exists in the spaces that other sites neglect—answering the mundane questions we ask the Internet about our families, our friends, our bodies. It caters to our baser search instincts. What is the overall picture of us, painted by the content farm? We are, it seems, avid TV watchers who adore sports, pets, and our families, worry about our jobs, and suffer from hypochondria. But maybe none of us needed a content farm to tell us that. "

Thinking about movements.org

Some questions you might ask as you analyze movements.org:

1. who founded it?
2. why?
3. what are the goals of the site?
4. what does the group support?
5. what does the group oppose?
6. who supports the group?
7. does it seem like there is a lot of interactivity/participation on the site?
8. what are some of the noteworthy design features?

Ptoww! 2009 Summit

Joe Bageant: Algorithms and Red Wine

(Excerpt from a terrific post by a writer who wrote from the perspective of the poor, unemployed, and over-worked people, the folks the Democratic party and liberal left left behind in the 90s. The whole piece is good, an engagement with some of the problems Lanier engages, written in a very accessible style. Joe died yesterday.)

Joe Bageant: Algorithms and Red Wine:

"On the other hand, this whole business of the new hive cybernetic connectivity, could be just a swarm of data bits with no particular significance, in and of themselves, other than the magical thinking belief that they do. Which ain’t no small thing, given that what we agree upon as reality is achieved by social consensus. Hell, to some people Beelzebub still stalks the earth. To others, America is a free republic, not a company town. We all have our hallucinations.

One thing for sure. Most people in the (over)developed world think the connectivity and speed of the algorithms behind the cyberhive are worth it. Even teachers teach to a standardized test so students will conform to an algorithm, and if that ain’t hive mind, I don’t know what is."

Diverting the Radicalization Track | Hoover Institution

Diverting the Radicalization Track | Hoover Institution:

"The challenge of alternatives is not about promoting democracy; it is about diverting at-risk populations from the grip of extremist actors so that such populations have space to experience the freedom to choose. In many cases, the violent extremists exert their grip through religious arguments, which disguise their own extremist goals by hiding them behind religion and the supposed religious battle. Exploiting religion in this way helps extremists. And while religion is of course not irrelevant in the fight against extremism, and while we must understand Islam so as to reflect sensitivities in the religion and its cultural milieus, it remains true that extremists would love nothing more than to engage us in a religious debate we cannot win. We should not play into their aspiration; instead, we should engage at-risk groups based on the needs of the people — young people — who comprise them."

...

"As a result of what new technology offers, the current generation of youth is the most individually empowered generation yet. They can act one way at home and in their communities and have a completely different identity over the internet or through their mobile phones. Because the digital and technological world offers young people opportunities to generate their own media and entertainment, they are learning critical thinking through self-exploration, and they are practicing digital democracy on a daily basis, even if they claim to despise the very concept of democracy. Without their keyboards, remotes, and telephones, they assume a real-life political, religious, ethnic, or nationalist identity. Behind the technology, many of these “digital natives” are beginning to identify with a transnational youth identity. Call it a “youth party” or simply a trend. But many of these youths seem to embrace platforms that facilitate interaction, expression, self-generated media, and expansion of social networks as defining features."

...

"The entrepreneurial spirit of the private sector (especially technology companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Facebook) and its desire to expand into new markets offers a tremendous opportunity in that the U.S. government need not start efforts from scratch, create new forums, or even seek to influence the direction of these independent business enterprises. Its ambition should be to partner with companies that capture the imagination and attention of impressionable young people by virtue of what they do for profit — profit which drives their creativity and success. Whether this is Facebook and the civil liberties, platforms, and global connectivity it provides; or Yahoo and its communication services; or Google and its expansive search engines, the private sector is offering alternatives that have global appeal and universal penetration. The U.S. government must work with these companies to expand the reach and scope of what they do.

For example, Howcast.com is an American focused company that serves as a one-stop shop for “how-to” videos. The U.S. government could use this website’s platforms to make inroads into at-risk environments by creating “how-to” videos on, say, using social networks for protest and mobile phones for freedom of expression, and for providing instructions on how to get around Internet censorship. The U.S. government has, in fact, already started working with Facebook to build worldwide, grassroots movements against violence."

Facebooking for Change

Facebooking for Change:

"We are in the midst of uncertain times, but I am hopeful about the future because young people are using Facebook for change in every corner of the globe. They are building civil society in places never before imaginable, standing up to violent extremism wherever it exists and for the first time, are really aware of their value as a demographic. As a government employee who focuses on youth empowerment and countering violent extremism, all I can say is a big fat thank you to Silicon Valley for creating the most important opening of our time.

Inspired by this phenomenon, Facebook, Access 360 Media, Columbia Law School, Google, Howcast, MTV, YouTube, and the U.S. Department of State are bringing leaders of 17 pioneering organizations from 15 countries together with technology experts next month for the first-ever conclave to empower youth against violence and oppression through the use of the latest online tools."

How I became a soldier in the Georgia-Russia cyberwar. - By Evgeny Morozov - Slate Magazine

How I became a soldier in the Georgia-Russia cyberwar. - By Evgeny Morozov - Slate Magazine:

"Not knowing exactly how to sign up for a cyberwar, I started with an extensive survey of the Russian blogosphere. My first anonymous mentor, as I learned from this blog post, became frustrated with the complexity of other cyberwarfare techniques used in this campaign and developed a simpler and lighter 'for dummies' alternative. All I needed to do was to save a copy of a certain Web page to my hard drive and then open it in my browser. I was warned that the page wouldn't work with Internet Explorer but did well with Firefox and Opera. (Get with the program, Microsoft!) Once accessed, the page would load thumbnailed versions of a dozen key Georgian Web sites in a single window. All I had to do was set the page to automatically update every three to five seconds. Voil�: My browser was now sending thousands of queries to the most important Georgian sites, helping to overload them, and it had taken me only two to three minutes to set up."