Public Intelligence Blog

John Robb

Technology Shifts and Economic Depression

Joseph Stiglitz (the Nobel prize winning economist) has a great new article: “The Book of Jobs“(behind Vanity Fair’s paywall, sorry).   In it, he makes a convincing case that the first global depression was caused by a process similar to what we are seeing today (I’m very happy somebody in the social sciences is actually attempting to show how technological change was a driver of the first depression, it’s about time).  Here it is in a nutshell:first depression, it’s about time).

1. Technological change in the form of the internal combustion engine (cars, tractors, trucks) improved transportation and farm productivity.  This led to an agricultural revolution that impacted a huge percentage of the US population.
2. Farm productivity soared and prices dropped.  This forced many farmers into bankruptcy and led to a steady migration of people from rural to urban locations driving down incomes/demand.
3. The downward pressure on incomes this caused resulted in a protraced economic depression that only ended when the US and Europe mobilized/nationalized every segment of the economy during WW2 (put everyone to work, trained them, etc.).

At this point in the article Stiglitz stumbles.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Breaks Records, Makes $400 Million in One Day (video game)

Source: TruthDig

+ Stealing America: Vote by Vote

+ American Blackout: documentary of Greg Palast’s investigation into voter fraud

+ UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections

+ Hacking Democracy: The HBO Special

+ Election theft video archive from Votescam.org

Note: Diebold – “Diebold Election Systems” acquired by “Premiere Election Solutions” then acquired by “ES&S” which was acquired by “Dominion” in 2010 (wikipedia).

Also see:
+ BlackBoxVoting.org
+ Votersunite.org
+ VerifiedVoting.org
+ Election Defense Alliance
+ Citizens for Legitimate Gov

Design with the Other 90%: CITIES features sixty projects, proposals, and solutions that address the complex issues arising from the unprecedented rise of informal settlements in emerging and developing economies. Divided into six themes—Exchange, Reveal, Adapt, Include, Prosper and Access—to help orient the visitor, the exhibition shines the spotlight on communities, designers, architects, and private, civic, and public organizations that are working together to formulate innovative approaches to urban planning, affordable housing, entrepreneurship, nonformal education, public health, and more.

Comment: Design for the other 90% is a great ‘movement’ but the sponsorship of this event (Citi & Rockefeller Foundation) + UN makes for an unsettling partnership when considering the divide between “the 1%” & “the 99%” and the questions behind the intentions of having their names affiliated with “helping the poor.” I would hope that those within those organizations who can genuinely make a difference are not trumped by those looking to exploit those in poverty.

Also see:
Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests

betweenthebars.org

Between the Bars is a weblog platform for prisoners, through which the 1% of Americans who are in prison can tell their stories. Leave a comment – we’ll pass it on.

In part with the help of MIT Civic Media.

 3 examples:

IBM is working with DARPA

IBM Testing Biometric Technology for Retail Advertising

How IBM Tech Helped Jump Start the Holocaust

Comment: I would be cautious+keen of the “smart planet” vision of those running IBM, they have made the brand popular for spreading to all cities. Keep an eye on them (biometric pun, sorry) and be friendly.

Also see:
Carnegie Mellon Univ project PittPatt (facial recognition) spun off into a company post 9/11 funded by DARPA, purchased by Google

Patrick Meier

Theorizing Ushahidi: An Academic Treatise

[This is an excerpt taken from Chapter 1 of my dissertation]

Activists are not only turning to social media to document unfolding events, they are increasingly mapping these events for the world to bear witness. We’ve seen this happen in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and beyond. My colleague Alexey Sidorenko describes this new phenomenon as a “mapping reflex.” When student activists from Khartoum got in touch earlier this year, they specifically asked for a map, one that would display their pro-democracy protests and the government crackdown. Why? They wanted the world to see that the Arab Spring extended to the Sudan.

The Ushahidi platform is increasingly used to map information generated by crowds in near-real time like the picture depicted above. Why is this important? Because live public maps can help synchronize shared awareness, an important catalyzing factor of social movements, according to Jürgen Habermas. Recall Habermas’s treaties that “those who take on the tools of open expression become a public, and the presence of a synchronized public increasingly constrains un-democratic rulers while expanding the right of that public.”

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Mobilityshifts.org

Digital Fluencies for a Mobile World

What are new pedagogic approaches for learning with mobile platforms? What are the limitations of the “digital literacies” paradigm and its first world/third world assumptions?

How do we promulgate digital fluency as an understanding of the particular features of global information flows in which data, attention, capital, and reputation might move both to and from individual actors and communities?

How can mobile media platforms be used for more than the one-way delivery of  content? What are new pedagogical approaches for real-time mobile learning that  make full use of the potential of mobile phones, iPods, laptops, PDAs, smart  phones, Tablet  PCs, and netbooks in formal and informal contexts? How can global  participants use mobile media to create rich social contexts around important  learning tasks? How can such platforms be leveraged to teach digital rights and the  value of collaboration across cultures?

How can we dispel the myth of the digital native?

How can mobile networks reshape our experiences of space and place through interactive architecture, locative art, geo-caching games, and real-time object recognition? What opportunities for networked teaching and learning might we find in such media-rich, responsive environments?

Workshop schedule

Robert David STEELE Vivas

One of our contributors passed this to me and asked me to comment in relation to the alarm that Winn Schwartau, Bill Caeli, Jim Anderson, and I sounded in 1994, in writing, to Marty Harris, then head of the National Information Infrastructure (NII).

First, the item.

From the man who discovered Stuxnet, dire warnings one year later

Mark Clayton

Christian Science Monitor, 22 September 2011

Stuxnet, the cyberweapon that attacked and damaged an Iranian nuclear facility, has opened a Pandora’s box of cyberwar, says the man who uncovered it. A Q&A about the potential threats.

EXTRACT:

CSM: How would you characterize the year since Stuxnet – the response by nations, industry and government?

LANGNER: Last year, after Stuxnet was identified as a weapon, we recommended to every asset owner in America – owners of power plants, chemical plants, refineries and others – to make it a top priority to protect their systems…. That wakeup call lasted only about a week. Thereafter, everybody fell back into coma. The most bizarre thing is that even the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Siemens [maker of the industrial control system targeted by Stuxnet] talked about Stuxnet being a wakeup call, but never got into the specifics of what needed to be done.

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check out the interview

One on One: Cole Stryker, Author of ‘Epic Win for Anonymous’

By JENNA WORTHAM

Cole Stryker, a freelance writer and media consultant living in New York, spent years digging into Internet culture and communities, both as a participant and as a blogger covering viral phenomena. He’s the author of a new book called “Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web.” He discussed with me what it’s like exploring the seedy underbelly of the Internet, the rise of Anonymous, and why it and 4chan, widely considered one of the darkest and most subversive corners of the Internet, may be one of the most important and influential creations to emerge from the modern Web.

Also see:
Autonomous Internet: 4chan and anonymnity

AnonOps