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Privacy
Petition to the High Court of Justice against the Biometric Database
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed a petition to the High Court of Justice today (February 20), seeking to annul a law that would establish a governmental biometric database and to cancel of the database’s two-year pilot program. The petition was filed by ACRI attorney Avner Pinchuk along with The Movement for Digital […]
Pic of the Day: George Orwell and Modern Information Technology
Now what would George Orwell say about this picture? The irony of surveillance… (BTW, Placa de George Orwell is located in Barcelona. He went to Barcelona in 1936, and hoped to write articles about the Spanish Civil War. )
Social Networks
Why Facebook does not Reign Supreme Among Young Adults? Cool Infographics may be Misleading.
If you look carefully at the poll, you will notice that this beautiful infographic may be misleading (like every other visualization). Many young adults have accounts on Facebook and Google +. Why? They opened an account because their friends were there, or because it was a great way to communicate with others. But having an account doesn’t mean that they are really active. In other words, we are confusing ‘subscriptions’ with ‘real activity’. This infographic doesn’t show us what are the usage patterns of young adults; It doesn’t show how many inactive accounts Facebook has; it doesn’t shoe how many people use Google+ just because they want to use hangout, which Google+ has combined together.
Going Viral – A New Book
Our first book ‘Going Viral‘ has just been published by Polity. What is the book about? We live in a world where a tweet can be instantly retweeted and read by millions around the world in minutes, where a video forwarded to friends can destroy a political career in hours or a cause for a […]
E-Government
10 Recommended Gov 2.0 Blogs
Wired to Share posted their recommendations to follow the following 10 Blogs that deal with Gov 2.0 issues: Maxine Teller – MiXT Media Ari Herzog – AriWriter Steve Radick – Social Media Strategery Jefferey Levy – Government 2.0 Beta Mark Drapeau – Cheeky Fresh Gwynne Kostin – On Dot-Gov Andrew Kryzmarzick – Generation Shift Nick […]
Librarians and e-Government: Mixed Feelings?
Good papers were presented at the eGovernment track at HICSS-42. One particular paper that attracted my attention was the paper of John Bertot titled Emerging Role of Public Librarians as E-Government Providers. According to the paper libraries are becoming a central place for certain populations to access e-Government services. Some of these services you can […]
Culture
Executives: Don’t try to change the Net Generation
Bob Mason and I conducted a study about how executives in organizations perceive the entrance of the “net generation” into the workplace. Researchers (see Tapscott for example) refer to the Net Generation as the generation of people born between 1978-1994. They label them as such because of the researchers’ perceptions of this generation as growing […]
Cultured Technology – About Religion and Technology
Cultured Technology is an article that presents a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between religious fundamentalist communities and the Internet, through addressing four dimensions of tensions and challenges: hierarchy, patriarchy, discipline, and seclusion. Together with Prof. Gad Barzilai, we develop the concept of cultured technology, and analyzed the ways communities reshape technology and […]
Freedom of Information
The Era of Pretended Transparency
“Transparency and trust are core values at Facebook ” the report says. But now after Snowden-Gate we know that certain governments (say the US) have direct access to data from Facebook and other big companies.
Shouldn’t Facebook disclose information about this as well? How much data and kind of data is extracted on a daily basis by governments (say the US)? Of course Facebook is not the issue. The same request can be made to Google, Yahoo, Apple or Microsoft. Publishing a report and pretending it is transparency, is a good way to mask the relevant information that should be accessible to users.
Some important references on freedom of information
This is the first post about freedom of information. Here are some important links to different reports about freedom of information. The next phase would be reading and analyzing these reports. So stay tuned: · Privacy International – Report about freedom of information around the world 2006 – http://www.privacyinternational.org/foi/foisurvey2006.pdf · UN – http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/26159/12054862803freedom_information_en.pdf/freedom_information_en.pdf · US […]
Digital Divides
Call for Papers – Social and Digital Inclusions in Networks
This mini-track calls for papers that study social and digital inclusion in networks at different levels. In the forthcoming conference, we would like to emphasize four areas: (i) connections between off-line divides and on-line divides; (ii) inequalities within and among communities; (iii) information and communication technologies for development; and (iv) inequalities between users with respect to social and digital divides. Possible levels at which to examine such areas include international, national, local, sector, communal, and individual. Both empirical and theoretical papers are invited. Building on the success of this mini-track from the past nine HICSS conferences, we invite submissions to the 2011 mini-track on social networking and communities.
It’s all about adding an ‘s’: crafting policies of information Technologies
Participating as a formal delegate in the twelve annual meeting of the Commission for Science and technology for development in the United Nations provided me with the opportunity to reflect upon the process of crafting policies in the area of information technology in the international level. I couldn’t help noticing the main obstacles that accompany […]
Other Recent Posts
Fighting for Which Future? When Google Met Wikileaks
The power struggles in the Internet are waged between conflicting sides, but framing them in terms of good against evil, anarchist versus conformist, freedom fighter against the power hungry is simplistic and ignores the complexity of these debates.
It is All about Networks: Attribute to the life of Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini
This is an attribute to the life of a courageous scientist-woman, Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, who died at the age of 103 at her home in Rome. Her eagerness to study and research defeated any artificial boundaries to learning: Fighting against masculine domination in science; and fighting against the blind racist anti-Semite rules issued by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. They didn’t let her do research in a university because she was Jewish, so she set up a small laboratory in her home. Among other things, she discovered critical chemical tools that the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerve networks.
Power and Networked Social Movements
I presented a paper with Manuel Castells in the 13th annual meeting of AOIR (Association of Internet Researchers) from a study we are conducting regarding networked social movements. In April we presented some of the findings at the USC Annenberg School for the ANN-SONIC Fourth International Seminar. You can watch the video by clicking here, or you can read below for further explanation about the work and the dynamics of power among stakeholders.