::: Dimblog :::

Start Thinking Macro!

2007-05-31T14:28:00.000-04:00

Well, after delaying it again and again, i finally decided to move to WordPress as my blogging platform and to use this opportunity to change the name of my blog. I got critique of both the name of the current blog, lack of good RSS feeds and i myself felt that WordPress has more features.

So, please update your bookmarks to "Think Macro"! And bear with me until I fine tune the new gadget. There will be an updated website as well, but that may take some time.

The world we "live" in...

2007-05-03T19:12:00.000-04:00

This time it is more optimistic and less realistic:

Thanks to Erik for the link. The original is at http://www.xkcd.com/

The world we live in...

2007-04-17T13:01:00.000-04:00

I am currently reading a chapter by Lynette Kvasny and Duane Truex about discourse surrounding the digital divide. Setting the context, they explain a shift in world's balance of power. Here is a quote:

Elston (2000) goes even further in stating that the balance of global economic power has shifted from governments to corporate boardrooms. She cites a study by the Institute for Policy Studies that compared corporate sales and gross domestic products, and concluded that 51 of the largest 100 economies in the world are corporations, not countries. This means that General Motors is now bigger than Denmark, IBM is bigger than Singapore, and Sony is bigger than Pakistan. (p. 403)

I find it fascinating and also helping me to build an argument for looking at the role of corporate world in policy making in my research. Any thoughts? Suggestions for additional references?

-----

In case you are interested, the full citation of the article is:

vasny, L., & Truex, D. (2001). Defining away the digital divide: A content analysis of institutional influences on popular representations of technology. In N. Russo, B. Fitzgerald, & J. DeGross (Eds.), Realigning Research and Practice in Information Systems Development: The Social and Organizational Perspective (pp. 399-414). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

And the Elston article is:

Elston, S. Global Economy: Shifting the Balance of Power, Environmental News Network, January 31, 2001 (available from http://enn.com/news/ennstories/2001/01/01312001/economy_41639.asp).

Sprinter

2007-04-16T09:29:00.000-04:00

"Sprinter" is a word coined yesterday by Gina. It stands for a sudden visit of winter right when everybody started thinking that spring is already here. Yes, it is April 16 and i woke up to discover an absolutely white street and while i was going to the library i became white as well.

The winter came back for a short but powerful visit. It is massively snowing now, but since it is not as cold as it was a couple of months ago, the snow is really heavy and sticky. So, all the trees are covered with snow now and are bending under the heavy burden. It is so beautiful!!!

Sprinter (April 16, 2007)

I definitely like winter!

re-barbie

2007-04-12T11:33:00.000-04:00

Got this link from Veronica. Who could believe that religious emancipation will come from Barbie?

Troubles in the virtual world

2007-04-09T11:20:00.000-04:00

There is an article telling a story of FBI going into SecondLife to investigate gambling taking place inthe virtual world. While it may be entertaining to imagine FBI agents walking around as animated creatures of opposite sex and with wings, I think it rises an interesting question about the relationship between the virtual and and the physical.

As far as i understand this, US is trying to regulate online gambling through controlling financial transactions with online casinos. But things are different for SecondLife because people there are gambling with Lindens (L$), which is the virtual money used in this world. But the issue is getting more complex since there is an entire economy associated with SeconLife and L$ are actually having a market based exchange rate with real money (L$266 = US$1 as of yesterday). So the virtual is actually real, or the other way around.

I am not sure i have enough knowledge about the phenomenon, but i think this is really fascinating. How exactly and are we going to apply regulation from the physical world to the virtual one? Not only we had to deal with concepts of identities, nationalities and geographical boundaries in virtual reality, but now we also have to address the virtual economy and its relation to the real world... Just writing this post and picking at all the statistics of economic activity there amazed me a lot. And there is much more going on there in other virtual worlds, such as WoW and other. This is simply very interesting and even fascinating.

We are on the map!!!

2007-04-05T18:18:00.000-04:00

Did you ever hear about the Nigerian fraud? So, here is an Israeli version of it. I think it is rather funny:

Private Ward 6,
Rambam Medical Center,
P O Box 151, Beer Sheba 84101
Tel Aviv.
Israel.
Email: jaron.abbas@inmail24.com

Hello,
I am very sorry to embarrass you with this email as I did not mean to intrude in your privacy if not for the peculiar situation I have found myself. As you read this, don't feel sorry for me, because it is the destiny of everyman to die someday. I am Jaron Abbas an Israeli by birth and a business merchant based in Tel Aviv. I have been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
It has defiled all forms of medical treatment, and right now I have only about a few months to live, according to medical experts. I regret that I have not particularly lived my life so well, as I never really cared for anyone (not even myself), but my trade. Though I am very well to do, I was never open handed; I was always hostile to people and regarded them like they never had hopes of becoming as successful as myself. Now I know that there is a lot more to life than just prosperity.
I believe that when I am given a second chance to come to this world, I would live my life a different way from how I have lived it. Now that death is imminent, I have willed and given most of my belongings to immediate and extended family members, as well as a few close friends. I want Allah to be merciful to me and accept my soul. Hence I have decided to support charity work; this is what I want to be remembered for. So far, I have been able to reach out to a few charity organizations in the Singapore, Algeria and Malaysia. Now that my health has deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself anymore.
I once asked members of my family to aid me in giving of alms to those organizations catering for the less privileged in Bulgaria and Pakistan; they refused and kept the resources to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not to be contempt with what I have left for them.
The last of my belonging which no one knows of, is the huge deposit of $2.5 Million US dollars that I have in a safe keeping company abroad, which I will want you to secure and bestow to charity organizations.
I have set aside a tenth of this for you.
If interested to help me use this funds to charity organizations please contact me on: jaron.abbas@inmail24.com for more details.
Allah is with you.
Jaron Abbas

We are on the map!

"you know..."

2007-03-29T21:39:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I transcribed an interview with a local policy maker. If you've never done it, try it. IT is a very "interesting" task and it makes you paying attention to various details of the language a person uses. I was surprised by the amount of times my participants used the phrase "you know".

Since then, i keep on noticing that many people are using it excessively and do not really pay attention to it. Very different people too. Have you ever noticed that? I hear my fellow students using it and today a professor in class also used it all the time. I wonder if i am using it all the time now too, you know...

Shut down day

2007-03-21T01:26:00.000-04:00

This is basically a free advertisement for an initiative promoting a day-long abstention from computers. Unfortunately, the organizers do not provide any explanations for why they suggest shutting the computers down for a day. This, and the negative tone of the call for action, may be the reason behind quite a sound opposition to this initiative.

However, i would suggest examining it with a calm head and thinking about this day as a day of re-examining the priorities and proportions in our lives. When i say proportion, i mean proportions of both the great contribution of technology to our lives and at the same time, our growing dependency on it. I will write more on the subject and suggest a little bit different way to approach this issue soon, but in the meantime, please mark you calendars and try making it. You will be surprised to discover that it can be actually nice.

So, here is the date: Saturday, 24 March 2007.
Event's website

And here is a funny video for you to watch, just before you use the "turn off" button:

Light at the end of the storage

2007-03-15T10:52:00.000-04:00

A positive sign from Google. They just posted in the company blog that they are not going to save our search history forever... well maybe... unless we ask... or unless the law changes and the big brother asks them... and in general they are going to store the search history forever, but they will blur the personally identifiable information after a couple of years.

I think this is good that the issue is now on the public agenda, though there are still unanswered questions (like why the identifiable information is stored in the first place, unless i asked for that? what is the nature of my relationship with google - am i selling the eyeballs for advertisers, or i am selling information about my behavior?). But it seems like a move in the right direction.

Any thoughts?

Firfox profile

2007-03-13T23:42:00.000-04:00

I think it's been over half a year since i completely switched to Firefox and, frankly, do not have any desire of getting back to IE (except for the rare occasions when the site doesn't come up right). Particularly i like it because of all the add-ons. I got this small weather bar at the bottom of the window, which is extremely helpful in the erratic Ithaca weather. I love BugMeNot plug-in and DownThemAll is also very handy. I am checking out a citation add-on from Zotero and am about to switch to del.ish.us as the main favorites manager. And there are more which i don't have the time to look up. I can feel the program getting more and more customized to my needs and it nice.

But there is also a concern. I am still using windows. So eventually i will have to re-install the computer. What will happen to all the personalization i have done to Firefix when i re-install it? The beauty of these add-ons is that they become so "transparent" that you just use them without thinking: "here i am going to use DownThemAll", or "i am checking weather with Forecastfox" (I actually had to look up the name of the add-on, to write about it here). You simply use it.

So here is the idea, and my guts' feeling is that it has been implemented already, but if not, i hope someone with enough coding skills will pick the challenge up. What if we could save a profile of our Firefox? Kind of an image that we could put at a newly installed machine, and it would have all the features we got used to? Such an image could be stored at a third party server, or you could just make it locally and back it up. But the main pint is that you personalized configuration of Firefox would be backed up.

What do you think?

Musical opium for masses?

2007-03-05T23:44:00.000-05:00

What is an international cultural event without some drama? What is that drama without Israel being involved in it? So, keeping up with the tradition, the upcoming Eurovision is supplying us with the current drama starring the Israeli entry. It looks like the Israeli song is facing a potential disqualification for containing a political message (more articles here).

Keeping my Israeli identity aside, what is the message conveyed by the Eurovision organizers? Is it that music (or art for this matter) cannot be political? Is the pop culture only about entertaining and once it is getting any message beyond fun and consumerism, it is no longer allowed? Is public forbidden to think while having fun? Is the mainstream musical culture simply opium for masses blocking them from critical thinking?

Documentary on Google

2007-03-05T23:16:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Tarleton for this one.

It is a bit long (47 minutes), but i think it is interesting even though i did not form a strong opinion about it. If i had to provide a short synopsis of the movie then it would be that:

- watch the first 15 minutes to see what a cool and fun company Google is
- watch the next 15 minutes to see the great scope of google's activity worldwide
- keep on watching to the next 15 minutes to hear the difficult and interesting questions google's activity rises (my favorite part).

Particularly interesting are the words of Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian for the Internet Archive, reacting to the "Hole in the wall" project usage of google. If you really have no time to watch the whole thing, just listen to this around minute 37:40.

Here us a link to the page on the original website. Ironically enough it is available through google video :)

Library recommenders systems

2007-02-17T00:03:00.000-05:00

Have you ever experienced a situation when you've borrowed a book from a library and a week later got an email saying that someone requested that book and you have to return it in a few days? It just happened to me a couple of weeks ago when i was required to return two books of Manuel Castells without even getting a chance to read them well. And i personally got curious about who is that person requesting the same books i am interested in. What else does s/he read?

And this is where i though about Amazon.com and wondered wouldn't it be cool if there was a recommender's system embedded in a library website? For example you search for a book and you see what else people searching for the same book looked at. People could post reviews and comments on particular items, reflecting for example on how useful the book or an article were for a particular course. Moreover, once a new book, supposedly relevant to your interests, would arrive to the library, you could get a notice about that. Etc.

Wouldn't all that and more (take a look at Amazon for example), make the entire library search richer and more engaging? Wouldn't it make the life easier when you start searching for literature on a subject you have no clue about? Wouldn't it get students more involved in the library, thus contributing both to their learning experience and community building? Where is potential flaw in this idea?

What do you think? I have a sense that if such a system is not already implemented somewhere, it is soon going to be...

Talent!

2007-02-16T23:01:00.000-05:00

Here is a piece of poetry written by my little, but super talented cousin Nadia. I think this is simply genius!

Hysterical

OH MY GOD, the sky is falling!
OH MY GOD, the kids are brawling!
OH MY GOD, the wind is blowing!
OH MY GOD, the Earth is slowing!
OH MY GOD, the Sun is shining!
OH MY GOD, my brother’s whining!
OH MY GOD, the phone is ringing!
OH MY GOD, the cat is singing!
OH MY GOD, he ate some pie!
OH MY GOD, he’s gonna die!
OH MY GOD, the stars are gleaming!
OH MY GOD, the pot is steaming!
OH MY GOD, T.V. is broken!
OH MY GOD, the fish has spoken!
OH MY GOD, the light has darkened!
OH MY GOD, the dark has lightened!
OH MY GOD, my breath is taken!
OH MY GOD, I’m very shaken!
OH MY GOD, the pen is moving!
OH MY GOD, the coffee’s brewing!
OH MY GOD, the food is rotten!
OH MY GOD, I choked a button!
OH MY GOD, I got an e-mail!
OH MY GOD, I missed a sale!
OH MY GOD, the door is squeaking!
OH MY GOD, my brain is peaking!
OH MY GOD, the glass is clear!
OH MY GOD, the end is near!
OH MY GOD, I’m growing lazy!
OH MY GOD, I’m going crazy!!!!

14 years of abstention :)

2007-02-15T10:09:00.000-05:00

Yes, after 14 years of no winter and/or winter sports, i finally went skiing! It was fun! Surprisingly i remembered what to do:

Skiing at Cornell Plantations (11 Feb. 2007)

And in general, the winter is extremely beautiful:

Winter Cascadila Creek (07 Feb. 2007)

Even if sometimes it is so stormy, that they shut down the university:

Snow Storm (14 Feb. 2007)

Political correctness

2007-02-12T07:07:00.000-05:00

I just noticed that Barak Obama, who recently officially announced that he is running for presidency, is covered mostly by black journalists. Erik agreed with me that there is such a tendency. Seems like it appears not PC for non-black journalists to cover the black candidate. Interesting...

More thoughts on Google

2007-02-05T00:15:00.000-05:00

Here are more thoughts on Google somewhat challenging the Googalization picture i drew earlier.

Sabih Oved as an allegory

2007-01-30T23:15:00.000-05:00

If you walk East on the Kazenelson street in Givataim and then turn right to the Sirkin street, you will see a short line of 5-10 people, sometimes more. It doesn't really matter what time of the day you will visit the place, there always will be people. They are standing in line to get sabih from the famous Sabih Oved (the link is to a funny commercial). Although sabih is a relatively simple dish, Oved literally managed to bring it to a level of art, justifying his self-proclamation as "the best sabih in the universe". The secret seems to be simple as well – Oved concentrates on a single product, but he is doing it the best.

However, Jon Stewart from the "Daily Show" thinks that he can do everything and still remain the best. As hilarious as he can be talking about politics and sometimes celebrities, he failed completely trying to talk about technology.

Yesterday, in light of the official lunch of Windows Vista, he hosted Bill Gates. Probably as an act of sophisticated criticism on the business practices of Microsoft, Stewart had MS's logo all over the screen as long as Bill Gates was talking. The entire studio was covered with MS symbols and a shiny box of the newly-released Vista stayed in Stewart's hands as glued. But leaving the studio aside, the content of the interview itself was even more surprising. Well, was there an interview at all? Stewart looked as he was shy or scared asking Gates meaningful questions. He simply let him taking over the stage, boldly promoting Vista and MS. And Gates was great! He is a very good speaker and an impressive marketer. He told everyone how people oriented the new Vista is, how secure it is and how wonderful the world will be thanks to the computers. Stewart remained satisfied with deep satirical remarks, such as asking Gates about his password and if he has flying toasters as his screensaver. And for those who still had doubts about the nature of this 10 minutes episode, Gates clarified it when he simply got up and left the studio the moment his interview was over. What can you do? The man is busy. He has an empire to run.

The entire episode leaves a very bitter taste. The popular satirical show looks as if simply selling itself to promotion of the MS's new product and Jon Stewart appeared as a scared little boy, bathing in the shadow of glory of the one of the richest and most powerful men on Earth. Not a single question addressing the violent business practices of MS, the multiple problems and ambiguities surrounding the new Vista; not a hint on the great similarities of the new system with MAC operating system, no notion of the extension of MS to providing content and getting more involved in our lives; nothing. None of the really important and interesting question surrounding MS was raised in this rather unique opportunity offered to the "Daily Show". Jon Stewart literally set the stage (with huge windows logos) to Bill Gates to promote the new MS's creation for almost 10 minutes.

What was there? Why did the biting satiric show turned into mewing toothless creature carefully following every movement of its master and expressing poor sense of humor? Is it the power of Bill Gate's personality that turned Stewart into a pincher? Or is it the collaboration between Viacom, the owner of "Daily Show", and MS that dictates a scathing provision of infomercial time, mocking the viewers' intelligence? Or is it me not understanding the deep humor and the critical insight of the situation?

Interestingly enough, the next show, "Colbert Report" also addressed a technology related issue involving MS. He was talking about MS paying people editing the Wikipedia entry on the company to make it more positive. However, unlike Stewart, Colbert managed to touch upon a number of critical points. So what was the difference? The actual presence of Gates? The personality of the anchor? Or it is an issue of professionalism? Just like Oved. If you know how to do one thing good, maybe you should stick to it and make it perfect?

Your help needed!

2007-01-22T02:47:00.000-05:00

Recently, i've been receiving comments on my blog's name.

Naming this blog, i was thinking about the combination of my name (Dima) and the word blog, hence "Dimblog". The only thing i did not take into account, is that the word "dim" has an "interesting" meaning in EN.

Since i want to keep blogging as part of my academic practice, i think i should shift it to a new domain. It is also a good opportunity to do it now, since i am rearranging the entire thing anyway.

Now, I NEED YOUR HELP in choosing a new name for the blog.

I have a number of my own ideas, but i would like to hear everybody else's thoughts first and at the end i will open the decision to a vote. So please, whoever reads this blog, suggest alternative names (by email, or here).

I only hope it will go better than the naming of the desk :)

Googalization

2007-01-17T10:48:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I came to google.com in order to search for something, just to discover that they put an advertisement on their homepage. No worries, they are still sort of true to the concept of having a clean homepage and the advertisement was basically to the new google product. It has a small shopping chart and a link offering $10 if you sign up for the service.

I don't know if that offer is available only in the States or elsewhere, but that is a curios one. What they are offering this time is a limited pay-pal-stile service. You create an account (i bet you can use your existing google account too), store your credit card details there and use it to check out when you shop online. Convenient, isn't it? You don't have to give your credit card details again and again over the net. You just trust google taking good care of security and use this simple and friendly service.

You can do this (and more) today with pay-pal of course, but having everything under one username should be so convenient. You just log into your google account and you have all your news, mail, blog, docs, etc. and now even an option to pay your bills.

But wait a second... What does it mean for my privacy? How much more will google now know about me? Will it help me sleeping better at night? Will it make me a better citizen? Maybe a happier person?

Let see what it already knows if i am using a series of its personalized services:

If i use google.maps it knows where i live and what the local businesses i am searching for.
If i search google, especially with the google bar, it knows where i go online
If i use google.news, it knows what i am interested in
If i use its feeds, it knows whose opinions i am interested in
If i use gmail, it knows what i am corresponding about
If i use Blogger, it knows what i am writing about
If i use google.docs, it knows what i am working on
If i use google.desktop, it knows what is on my computer
If i use google.finance, it knows where my money or my financial interests are
If i use picasa, it knows what i and my family and friends look like
and there is more to it...

Now i have the unique opportunity to allow google know what you are shopping for! Why not? Don't you trust google? They will not use your personal data, why would you worry? Google will only use the aggregative data, gathered through all the channels above and crossed, to make your searches more precise. It will ONLY help you making better decision. For it know what you REALLY want and are looking for.

So far is on the sarcastic note. Now the question is where is the line that we draw between getting convenience and jeopardizing our privacy? What google offers is indeed very convenient and is usually of a great quality. But to what extend we are ready to submit our lives to a commercial entity, counting on it helping us to improve our lives and not misusing it? Where is the border line? Is there one?

So much for the innovation...

2007-01-17T09:44:00.000-05:00

Skype founders create online television service

Skype founders are Joost in time for online TV plan

Skype founders take TV to Net

Global Internet TV Service by Skype

Right now Google.news shows 278 articles (and counting) with these and similar headlines. All of them are dealing with the recent announcement of Skype founders, Niklas Zennstrm and Janus Friis, that they are going to lunch an internet based TV service they call "Joost". From my reading of a few news articles, what they are offering is to replace your TV screen with a computer screen and your decoder box provided by the cable company by software on their servers. The business model is based on advertisement (means you pay nothing exept for your time and privacy) until they offer a pay-per-view option, and they also promise the service to be piracy-proof (well, that one we'll have to wait and see).

As much as i love Skype and think it was breaking through idea at the time, right now i fail to see the great promise of Joost. Why would people like watching their TV on a computer screen? Does it mean they need to upgrade their computers to have at least 29 inch screen and a decent sound system? Does it mean the computer is moving from the office to the living room? What is the relative advantage of watching commercial based content online, vs. paying a relatively low fee and gaining full control over the content and the settings where one can view it? Today you can buy most of the content that Joost is going to offer on DVD or VoD and it doesn't cost that much (that is assuming you follow the legal way, otherwise it is even less) and you can choose where and when to watch it. One place where watching something in real time worth the effort is sports, but then again comes the question if the computer screen experience worth the $10 for the sports channel on cable? The cable companies start offering bundles of services including TV, phone and internet, so the relative part of paying for the content is probably diminishing even though it is hard to determine. Will people be willing to jeopardize their privacy even more and let also "Joost" follow what they are watching and where they are surfing? Well, the notions of privacy seems to be changing, so maybe the last question has a more obvious answer.

If Joost does go big however, one possible positive outcome from a consumers' point of view may be decrease in pricing of cable TV services. At the same, i think Microsoft's attempt to turn the x-box into a media center by connecting it to the web and actually offering the content, bares the similar, if not greater potential. Anyway, both of them are aiming at the Western, developed countries, which raises a series of additional questions about digital inclusion (divide), but that is for another post.

Even if i am mistaken in my skepticism, and Joost is going to be the next big thing (i.e. people value their privacy, time and limited ability to choose less than few dozens dollars or shekels), i still cannot get rid of the feeling that Joost is the same old thing we all know, just the cover is different (similar to the recent Google-Orange partenership). Unlike Skype that presented an innovative thinking about the technology and people's needs, Joost seems to replicate the old package and just shifting the platform. So much for the innovation...

------------------------
Update, 13:00 - Apparently i am not the only one asking these questions. Take a look here for example (and she has probably different incentives thinking about this things than i do).

Wikipedia?

2007-01-11T14:48:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting post with thoughts on Wikipedia's dark future and there are three points that caught my attention.

First, the idea of commercial forces forcing their models on Wikipedia commercializing it. Basically the argument in the post is simpler and is about commercial entities taking advantage of the openness of Wiki. However, i think that it may even go beyond to a greater influence, such as that described by Schiller in his book - advertising based models taking over new media and new outlets.

Another point is about the bureaucratic structures that emerged in in Wikipedia. The interesting point is that the hierarchy in Wikipedia is activity based - those who edited more got into more powerful positions. The problem with this structure is that once the hierarchy got established, people "in power" channel they energy to preserve the power strucutre.

The thirds point is about lack of incentive for Wikipedians to continue contributing to enterprise - they are getting neither money nor recognition for their effort (which raises interesting questions regarding how they utility from contributing to Wikipedia is constructed).

The last two points made me thinking again about the potential structure we are seeking for the "Human Network". On the one hand, the idea of having a non-hierarchical structure may be workable, but there is still should be bureaucracy that will prevent people from gaining too much power that will allow them to abuse their position. It seems to me that once the main focus shifts from the core activity of an organization to preserving particular power structures, the overall performance of the organizations suffers. At the same time, the issue of incentives is important. We've seen that in the last few years dealing with HN and that is not new, but it is still good to see it shared by others.

Any additional thoughts anyone?

Loving Technorati

2007-01-10T20:30:00.000-05:00

I was looking for Erik's blog in Technorati and typed the blog address (www.framingconflict.blogspot.com/) in the search field. The result exceeded all the expectations. Here you can find it and this is the text:

Huh?

There are blogs, and then there's whatever you just typed in. If it's a blog, we don't know about it. Maybe you made a typo. Or maybe it's a blog that doesn't exist. Maybe you don't exist. (In which case, please ignore this.)

I am laughing out loud :)

Blogs I read

2007-01-10T20:23:00.000-05:00

Most of the blogs here are my friends' blogs. Some of them are more personal, but the others have more general content. So, looking forward this page is divided into a few sections and some of the blogs appear in both of them. The names are in alphabetical order and all the links open in a new window/tab. I will update the page as time goes by.

Blogs i participate in
Digital inclusion blog
My culinary adventures

Society and/or technology
Danial (EN)
'Gbenga (EN)
Lisa (EN)
Eszter Hargittai (EN)
Tarleton (EN)

Communication research
Erik (EN)

Personal
Alma (HE)
Elya (RU)
Leonichka (RU)
Michelle (EN/CH)
Nadya (RU)
Sean (EN)
Josh (EN)

Last updated: February 2007

Interesting and/or useful websites

2007-01-08T15:31:00.000-05:00

Here are some interesting and/or useful website either for me or anyone reading this blog. More will be added or changed as time goes by, the date at the top indicates the last time this page was updated and all the links open in new window/tab.

Digital inclusion (aka digital divide)
Digital Divide Network
Eszter Hargittai

Rearranging the blog

2007-01-08T14:38:00.000-05:00

Since i moved to the new blogger i decided to reorganize the blog a little bit. In order to keep the amount of links on the side bar minimal, i decided to have constant pages with lists of the blogs that i read and websites i visit. I will also try having a resource page on the issues that interest me. Here we go...

Interests

2007-01-04T01:50:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, when Saddam Husein was executed i looked what were the top topics in various online environments (it just seemed to be the only thing in most mainstream US media).

So, the top story in google.news was about Husein, as well as the top tag at technorati's web page. However, when i checked out digg.com, there was no trace of Saddam Husein's execution on the entire first page. Top stories dealt with gadgets and video games. For those who don't know, digg is a website that allows users to rate the relevance/importance of news items. Some view it as the next step in organizing the huge amounts of information we are exposed to.

Frankly, i was surprised. I just wanted to see what were the different versions of coverage of the execution, but i did not expect to find no coverage at all.

So, looking at the surprising results at digg, i thought. Is it an indication of the true priorities of web users in terms of news content? Or it is a unique feature of digg users?Or it is simply that social classification of news doesn't work?

Any thoughts?

New Year's present from Google

2006-12-29T20:38:00.000-05:00

Who could imagine i will receive a present from them... but yes, they moved my blog to the new blogger and now i will have to spend some time learning the new features. I am particularly happy about the labels, which are actually the reason why i am writing this post.

OK, now i am back to my paper :)

Digital Divide and Modernization Theory

2006-12-28T17:18:00.000-05:00

I am reading a book called "Approaches to development communication" and one of the chapters, by Jan Servaes and Patchanee Malikhao, is telling the story of theoretical approaches to development, basically starting with modernization, through dependency to more complex and holistic approaches.

Describing modernization, one paragraph particularly caught my attention. Outlining the modernization perspective's focus on economic growth and uni-direction evolution, Servaes and Malikhao write:

"In order to be a modern society, the attitudes of 'backward' people – their traditionalism, bad taste, superstition, fatalism, etc. – which are obstacles and barriers in the traditional societies have to be removed. The differences among nations are explained in terms of the degree of development rather than the fundamental nature of each. Hence, the central problem of development was thought to revolve around the question of 'bridging the gap' and 'catching up' by means of imitation process between traditional and modern sectors, between retarded and advanced or between 'barbarian' and civilized sectors and groups to the advantage of the latter."

And I couldn't pass by the 'bridging the gap' without thinking about the digital divide rhetoric. After all the term itself – digital divide – is based in the ideology claiming that there are the advanced and the retarded in ICT adoption, and that getting more advanced necessarily means being better off. Further reading the chapter and thinking about the link, the notion that the two are really linked grew stronger. And I think there is a caution note for all of doing research in the field, or even more so, working in the field, to treat technology more critically, to remember that technology itself is not the goal, but people are.

As the development thinking seems to be moving forward to more sophisticated approaches, the research and practice related to the digital divide should catch up. I just read another article overviewing the digital divide research since the beginning of the millennium and there is a shift, but it is slow. More on that in the next post. Have to finish the paper :)

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In case you are interested, the full citation of the article is:
Servaes, J., & Malikhao, P. (2003). Development communication approaches in international perspective. In J. Servaes (Ed.) Approaches to development communication. Paris: UNESCO.

P.S. Did you notice how the donation bar at Wikipedia jumped from some 300K to 700K overnight? I wonder what has happened….?

Only in Ithaca 2

2006-11-29T14:10:00.000-05:00

We don't need no cinematography! The story continues:

From: bounce-810576-3539755@list.cornell.edu [mailto:bounce-810576-3539755@list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Rhoda Streifer
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 10:00 AM
To: international-l@cornell.edu
Subject: dog walking exchange

thanks to the individuals who are interested, i cannot read the Chinese or Japanese characters in the response sent to me on Nov 26. if you are still interested, please send your mail in English. i do not have software in a different languages.

...and I am on my way to Hong-Kong.

Only in Ithaca

2006-11-27T23:29:00.000-05:00

While i am waiting for the tea to boil, here is an email i got on one of my mailing lists:

From: bounce-799805-3539755@list.cornell.edu [mailto:bounce-799805-3539755@list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Rhoda Streifer
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2006 2:59 PM
To: international-l@cornell.edu
Subject: person to walk my dog in exchange for esl lesson or simply get regular exercise

I have a very wonderful 9 yr. old dog whom i cannot walk anymore due my age i have been tutoring English as a second language for 31 yrs and i am the mother of two grown children. The dog walk would only take from 20-30 minutes and i would go along and "pick up' after the dog.The route is near my home from North Albany St around one to two blocks onto north cayuga and then home. This would be good for a man or woman of any age who would like to get some moderate exercise without having to join a gym for $400/month. also, a pre-teenager age 11 though teenager age 16 might like this job. Please let me know.. you may phone me at 277-7351 or respond to this email. . thanks and hope to hear from you soon.

Only in Ithaca :)

Peace Journalism and Development News

2006-11-11T16:26:00.000-05:00

I am trying to understand this concept of development communication. Right now I am reading a book by Clement Asante called "Press Freedo and Development". Putting in a nutshell my understanding of the progress of the subfield of development communication it has gone from applying a modernization theory to alternative, more reflexive(?) approaches, one of which is development support communication. In a way it is a transition from the strong influences paradigm to a more moderate view – if the earlier approaches talked about communication actually leading developmental processes, the later approaches are talking about communication being part of a more complex matrix of social, economic, cultural and political influences.

One of the terms described in the book is that of "development news". Deriving from a body of research that shows that developing nations are being portrayed by the Western media mostly in terms of catastrophes, political troubles, human suffering and misery, she suggests an alternative approach. Here is how Asante describes it:

"Development news is basically a development-oriented news story that gives a positive image of a country. This news item tries to raise national consciousness, promote national unity and integration, and help to improve the quality of life of the people in terms of provision of health services, food production, community development and alike. Thus, development journalism or communication can be defined as the critical examination, evaluation and reporting of the relevance of a development project to national and local needs. In fact, any news item that tends to focus or highlight any form of social change, development, growth, or improvement in a society or nation falls under the development communication concept." (p. 150)

Well, this normatively charged approach may appear naïve, not rigorous and simplistic. Moreover there is a series of question raising about the journalistic norms involved and the role of journalism as a social institution. Later Asante quotes Narinda Aggarwala (1979) who wrote:

"Development journalism is the use of all journalistic skills to report development processes in an interesting fashion. It may require high skills and hard work but the rewards of this kind of journalism can be tremendous. It could almost lead to the humanization of international news"

And then she quotes Schramm and Atwood (1981):

"By development news, these Third World spokesmen mostly mean "good" news."

Reading all this (and more) I had difficult time accepting the idea that development news is necessarily optimistic news. What about some healthy criticism of the regime, the industry, the civil society? What about media being an accountability mechanism in a democratic (or even semi-democratic) society? There is something intuitively wrong in viewing media as a tool of dissimilation of positive news only.

As the same time, reading this, made me thinking about the concept of "peace journalism", which is also trying to promote a normative stand in conflict coverage. I think that there are parallels, while at the same time PJ has some more advanced ways of conceptualizing its position. The basic argument there would be that as journalists take a normative stand in issues of crime, drugs, sexual violence, etc., they can also take a stand in coverage of conflicts. The important distinction however, is that the taken stand is more of a macro character, rather than explicit support to the parties. Similarly to an overall notion in crime coverage that crime is bad, there could be a notion that in conflict situation, regardless on who is right and who is wrong, the conflict itself is bad. At first, it is rather difficult to grasp, but reading more on the subject you do realize how contemporary media do not take a stand towards conflicts, in a way assuming that conflicts are exogenously imposed and they are there to stay. The claim of PJ is by changing the prism and looking at the conflict itself as a socially undesirable phenomenon can contribute to changing the social mindset as well.

Here I can see a possible link to development support journalism as taking a macro normative stand that the development is good. However it does not imply that from now on developing nations should receive positive and optimistic coverage only. The idea is probably more of a self aware journalism contributing to the shift of social mindset.

Another interesting point which is kind of rising from out PEACE study and in a way from Galtung's writing is that talking about peace, you have to talk about socio-economic development. Galtung is talking about positive peace, which is a motion towards inclusion and transparency not just among societies, but also within the societies themselves. Thus the positive peace includes socio-economic development and inclusion within and among nations, which in turn can strengthen my point about similarities in journalistic treatment of peace and development.

Any thoughts?

More on parade

2006-11-08T13:34:00.000-05:00

Well, Ynet has a special section dedicated to parade coverage, which is probably signifies the centrality of the issue on the Israeli public agenda.

Election and my privacy paranoia

2006-11-08T01:58:00.000-05:00

Right now I am sitting in a living room watching, together with two classmates, the results of the US election coming in. Yes, this is yet another socializing event :) As we watch it, there is apparently a mini-history taking place as the democrates are taking back the house. Watching it with two "burned" (literally translation of שרוף from Hebrew) democrats it is rather entertaining. Judge yourself:

more :)

However, not everything is that shiny. A couple of days ago Veronica sent me that article, which was rather "eye-opening" for me. Here are some examples of articles in English describing the phenomena: [1], [2], [3] (thank you Erik for those). Basically, the idea is that in this election campaign managers used voters registry crossed with various consumer data for targeted campaigns. As a result they claim to be able micro-manage the election knowing practically everything about their voters' behavior. So today, when you shop, subscribe for a journal or send your kids to a summer camp, you've been literally monitored by the Big Brother. Is it me, or this is spooky? How come that we don't really care about that? What happened to the boundaries of our privacy? Today the monitor the behavior to target the message/political pressure and what will happen tomorrow? Are we going to be followed to the polls? After that I do start question my concerns about Google for there are worse things out there…

And here is the guy who is apparently (partly?) responsible for creation of this database, Frank Luntz, a name and a face to remember.

Is religion evil?

2006-11-08T00:38:00.000-05:00

Well, this is a little bit long one and also probably a sensitive one, but let see…

In the last couple of weeks, there is a huge debate going on in Israel regarding a possibility of having a gay parade in Jerusalem. Well, the parade is scheduled for the end of the week (as from what I understand have happened in the last 5 years), but this time there is a huge opposition to it from the religious communities in the city. The claim, shared by various religion representatives, is that Jerusalem is a holy city and gay relationships are such a huge sin that having the parade will contaminate the place. The things are kind of going out of control at the moment while ultra religious people (dare I say fanatics) are burning trash bins and tires, block highways, throw stones o n the policemen and today even attacked the mayor. The police is afraid people will get hurt or even killed. The newspapers seem to be flooded with articles on the subjects and the talkbacks (got to love them!) flourishing with comments ranging from calls to cancel the parade and even expel the gays to having it at any cost and break the bones of everyone who will try to stop it. I also had a big argument with a friend about that matter and we kind of agreed to disagree. But it made me thinking…

The argument against the parade is the holiness of the place. It is claimed that the religious feelings are going to get hurt that much by holding that parade that is not justified to have it. And I keep on asking myself if the religious feelings are more important compared to civil liberties? How do we compare? For example, one argument I heard is that the religion is deeper rooted in our culture, it has history and thus people are more sensitive compared to the gays. Well, first I am not sure how true this statement is. In a similar fashion one can claim that secular Israelis are less passionate about their secularity and thus Israel should be turned into an absolutely religious state based on religious law only. Then, I still find it difficult to decide if a long lasting believe matters more than a basic right of a person to have a different sexual orientation. If I believe for hundreds of years that the earth is flat and it really hurts my feelings when people get out to streets to celebrate the fact that they were able to travel around the world, does it make my believe more valuable than their right to celebrate a different set of believes and behaviors? Another argument I hear is "Why in Jerusalem? Aren't there other places? Why not Tel-Aviv?" And, again, I keep on asking myself, isn't Jerusalem a capital of all Israel? If that is so, why one group of citizens can express their believes and ways of living in the capital, but another is not? How do we decide whose liberties are more important than the others'? Frankly, I fail to see a difference.

I have to admit that the last few weeks gave a lot of food for though about religion, or more precisely what it has became. I do believe the original idea was good, but the contemporary version, or at least the contemporary publicly presented version, is rather bad. For me, the main focus of the last week was of course the debate, or shall I say the fight, around the parade. A few days ago I also read Lisa's post about Australian Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly basically blaming the victims of the southwest Sydney gang rapes, for what happened. I do not understand that.

When I look at religion as it is represented today I see disrespect to women and impatience towards anyone who is different. I see violence, anger and blocked minds. I see abuse of originally beautiful values and I see masses – masses of people who are either being manipulated or have chosen an easy path of being told what to think. This is not kind of a religion I am ready to identify myself with or to support.

Of course, what I am doing here is a rough, and probably unfair, generalization. I've been discussing this with people and many have told that majority of people who believe are not that fanatic. And as a communication scholar I understand that media represent the extremes for they look better on screen. And still I keep on asking myself, why do all those who believe and keep their faith private and pure, do not speak? If they are the majority, how do they allow this bunch of fanatics abusing their religion? How do they allow introducing more evil and anger through this religion that they love and respect? I do not understand that…

I am sorry to admit, but it seems like religion has became a source of all the things we do not want in a modern, moderate, thinking, liberal and patient society. In a ways it has became a source of evil :(

Any thoughts?

P.S. Interesting, looking for articles in English to illustrate some of mine points, I saw that they are actually much more PC than those in Hebrew…

Wild Ithaca

2006-10-21T13:08:00.000-04:00

Well, it seems like since I moved here, the calm town became very wild. There were 3(!) crime instances here in the last two and a half months. However, even when the crime does happen, it is still not very ordinary… Here are two examples from the yesterday's "crime alert" email:

"The Ithaca Police Department is investigating an incident reported to their agency on October 19, 2006, at approximately 5:30 am.
The incident reportedly occurred in the 400 block of E. Seneca St., approximately two hours before the report was made to police. An unknown subject knocked on a resident's door, once the resident opened the door, several masked intruders forced their way into the apartment and demanded money and marijuana. One of the intruders was armed with what appeared to be a rifle or shotgun. The resident reportedly surrendered money and marijuana to the intruders, who then fled."

Maybe that is me, but I find the mere mentioning of the resident surrendering marijuana to the intruders, as part of a police report, amusing. It is ok to hold an armored-robbery-worthy stock of marijuana at home, but stealing it is a crime… OK... But wait! Here is another one:

"The Ithaca Police Department is investigating a trespass complaint that occurred on College Avenue on October 15, 2006. The incident occurred at approximately 5:30 am but was not reported to the police until approximately 10:30 am. A female resident reported that she was awakened by a subject who reportedly was removing her bedroom covers from her. The subject reportedly fled the room when the resident was awakened. The resident fell back asleep. A few minutes later, the female resident was again awakened, by the same subject turning a light on in her room. The intruder again fled when the resident was awakened this second time. The victim described the intruder as an Asian male, in his 20s, wearing a light colored shirt and blue jeans."

And I keep on asking myself: What would you do after being woken up by a stranger trying to pull off your covers? Would you go and check your house? Would you check your locks? Would you call the police? Or maybe just a friend? No, no, no, no!!!! Usually people just turn on the other side and keep on sleeping. That's normal. Happens every day… Unless of course someone turns on the lights - that's wrong!

The mystery of the floating bar

2006-10-17T00:47:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, Lisa pointed out that my blog was broken. And indeed it was. Now I figured out what it was about. Apparently, Blogger has a really weird feature… when you place a picture which is too big for the post area or a link that is too long, it simply shifts the side bar and puts it down. Nice, isn't it? And apparently there are many people who suffer from this problem. I found this idea on the blogger's help group and simply changed the source pictures for my post about the book sale. The really weird thing is that when I insert the pictures, I give them exact dimensions, so I really don't understand why the size of the source would matter. Any ideas?

Dangerous Ithaca

2006-10-17T00:25:00.000-04:00

Here is a message I received a few days ago in my email:

Campus Crime Alert
Oct. 13, 2006

The Ithaca Police Department is investigating a strong arm robbery that occurred on October 10, 2006, at approximately 9:30 p.m. in the 500 block of E. Buffalo St. The victim, a Cornell student, was walking on E. Buffalo St. when she was approached by a male subject. The subject knocked her purse from her hand, picked up the purse from the ground and fled west down the Buffalo St. hill. The subject was described as a male, 5 foot, 6 inches tall, medium to heavy set build, wearing a dark-colored, hooded jacket.

Students and others are reminded to be aware of their surroundings and to walk in well lit areas.
Contact the Blue Light Escort Service at 255-7373 to arrange for walking escorts around campus.

Report suspicious persons on campus to the Cornell Police at 255-1111 or, off campus, to the Ithaca Police Department at 272-3245, or dial 911 in the case of an emergency.

This is the first time I heard of crime in this town. And as it happened (well, almost), they actually sent an alert to the entire campus! I find this amusing. And yes, the university police offers escort services for those who afraid walking alone in dark. Well, after all there was a "strong arm robbery"… first one in two months.

What a dangerous place this world…

Weather

2006-10-12T00:02:00.000-04:00

I was checking the weather for tomorrow, trying to figure out if it is going to rain and look what i saw:

(pay attention to the low temprature tomorrow)

Couldn't help myself from posting this. Now i am back to my home exam.

Prelims

2006-10-10T01:30:00.000-04:00

I guess those of you who visit this blog from time to time, noticed that I didn't update it for a few weeks. Well, this is a sign that I started the semester and it is rather busy. These days, thanks to Columbus, we are having a Fall Break – 2 days to extend the weekend. But this is not a real break. In the best tradition of the Israeli academia the whole break is dedicated to preparations for exams which are called here "prelims". Some of them took place before the break and some are supposed to be after. The difference between prelims and midterms is that there is only one midterm exam in a class, but there can be several prelims. For example, on Wednesday I am going to receive an exam in communication theory class and there is going to be another one later in the semester.

But let leave the techniques aside and, risking loosing the few readers I have here, let me have a prelim for you. It's an easy one:

What would you do at 5:30 (am) on Saturday morning?
a. Sleep
b. Preparing to sleep
c. Go to take a spot in a line for a huge book sale that opens at 8:00

Exactly! Last Saturday, Erik, Josh and I woke up at 5:30 to go and sit in line for the Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library book sale. Apparently this is one of the largest book sales in the country and it has about 250,000 items. Basically, as I understand it, what happens is that there is an NGO which collects used books throughout the year and then sells them in a huge sale, lasting 3 weekends. It is so huge that people actually stand in line to get to the sale first. We arrived there around 6:00 and I got number 150(!). We were told that there was one guy who actually slept two days in a tent in order to be the first. So, we were relatively sane and spent only two hours on approximately 10 degrees cold sipping coffee and chatting.

The sale itself was rather impressive. It is a huge hangar with stocks and stocks of books which are sort of organized according to topics.

I got some books. Keren would be proud of me for now I can read the actual Popper, Kuhn, Durkheim, etc. I also got Adam Smith's "Wealth of the nations"… now I have to read it all…

Nostalgia…

2006-09-07T02:06:00.000-04:00

Here is another interesting quotation from the stuff I am reading these days:

"William Niskanen (1971) made the simple assumption that bureau chiefs seek to maximize the budgets made available to them by legislatures. Budgets were, after all, both the symbol and measure of bureaucratic success, as well as the source of bureaucratic comfort and ease. Using its monopoly position, a bureau will attain a budget which oversupplies the bureau's output to the point at which consumer surplus is matched by the inefficiency of oversupply."

Reading that brought some memories from a certain 3-year period of my life…

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Full citation of the article:

Miller, Gary J. 1997. “The Impact of Economics on Political Science.” Journal of Economic Literature 35 (3): 1173‑1204

Procrastination as a statement?

2006-09-04T17:26:00.000-04:00

I am back to school and thus read a lot of interesting stuff. Right now I am preparing for a presentation in a class called "Inside technology – social construction of technology" and am reading an article about social choice in machine design. Basically it says that mechanization of the production process in metal cutting industry "mirrors the antagonistic social relations of capitalist production".

At some point it states: "Workers practiced pacing for many reasons: to keep some time for themselves, to exercise authority over their own work, to avoid killing 'gravy' piece-rate jobs by overproducing and risking a rate cut, to stretch out available work for fear of layoffs, to exercise their creativity and ingenuity in order to 'make out' on 'stinkers (poorly rated jobs), and, of course, to express hostility to management" (I added the italic). All these are described as "collective cooperation and labor-prescribed norms of behavior".

Now I am asking myself: what about procrastination? We, as students, usually tend to procrastinate, don't we? I find the act of procrastination similar to that of pacing – postponing things without an 'objective' reason. So, when we do that, are we exercising authority over our studies or even more than that (of course) expressing our hostility to the institutions? Anyhow, it seems like procrastination can be viewed as a form of collective cooperation or kind of a norm of behavior. In other words, now, when we procrastinate, we can view it as a proletarian statement! :)

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In case you are interested, the full citation of the article is:
David F. Noble "Social Choice in Machine Design: The Case of Automatically Controlled Machine Tools." In MacKenzie and Wajcman (eds.) The Social Shaping of Technology. First Edition (1985), Open University Press. Second Edition (1999). Philadelphia and Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Beebe Lake

2006-09-02T02:02:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday my international TA summer camp fellows, their friends and i went for a walk around one of the local attractions - the Beebe Lake. It was nice and is supposed to be even nicer later in the fall when the trees will change the color. We met some people who were jumping from a bridge to the gorge and of course the one whom i saw jumping spoke perfect Russian :)

Here are my pictures from the walk:

Walk on Beebe lake

Aug 26, 2006 - 27 Photos

Nikos has also uploaded his (despite the name he gave to his album, we didn't actually reach the plantation; just the botanic gardens).

N.B. I don't really know what the name of the lake means, but it has nothing to do with Netanyahu - that i checked :)

Wikipedia in Indian laguages

2006-09-01T10:59:00.000-04:00

Here is another example for a reason to back Wikipedia's ideology... Isn't it cool?

Wiki-Brittanica

2006-08-31T13:16:00.000-04:00

So, here's a thought… (copyright Sean Brin – maybe its about a time you write something there :) I just got out of the class I am TAing on Human Computer Interaction. During the lecture, Dan, mentioned that one of the great advantages of Wikipedia is that it instantly releases material and updates; something that can hardly done by Britannica in a paper version. And I was thinking…

Britannica does have a website, so technically it could somehow adapt to the dynamics, and there is an ongoing struggle between it and Wikipedia over the online dominance (well, actually the battle has gone well beyond the borders of the cyberspace). In the last year or more, Wikipedia has been criticized for being inaccurate and mediocre, particularly compared to the established encyclopedias. Although I do favor Wikipedia's model and philosophy, today's lecture made me think that Britannica could actually have an upper hand in this online battle if it would open its mind to some new models. Thus for example I think there is place for a Wiki-Britannica: something that will have the core of Britannica content with ability for people to add and edit it. In ideal world this would be based on interaction between Britannica people and the community of Wikipedia editors, thus (hopefully) leading towards better quality, more rigorously researched, and yet more diverse and culturally sensitive content.

Here are also many questions of course. For example the question of business model arises. Today, in order to use Britannica, you have to pay, and this money is probably used to do that research the encyclopedia is so proud of. What will happen if the content will become free and dynamic online? Should all the content become free? Besides, will Britannica's content gain from a real interaction with people who care? Will the spirit of Wiki community remain if it starts interacting with an institutionalized entity such as Britannica? I don't know… but I like the idea, particularly in light of the recent changes Wikipedia had in the way the community is managed. Perhaps this is the time to consider new models for both sides of the spectrum…

We want coffee!

2006-08-31T01:02:00.000-04:00

Well, this one is really last for today, but it is really cool and in light of the hour and the time I have to get up at the morning (7 am!!!), you can get a chance to see what I will look like.

Click here and try dragging the pot with coffee towards the dogs/bunnies/whatever they are… and there are more… (thank you Gina :)

What do I study?

2006-08-31T00:56:00.000-04:00

Well, this is a last one for today, but it is a semi-serious one. Today we had one of those classes when we talk about defining the field of studies we all are working in. This made me wondering, how many of the people whom I know and who know me, really know what is that I am studying. Well, one thing, the previous sentence proves, is that I can't really write, but what is that I am studying? It seems that there are only two people reading my blog, but still, what do you think? :)

Macaroni with cheese and wine

2006-08-31T00:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had another culturally-culinary experience having my first ever macaroni with cheese and of course with wine. Well, Gina, my fellow student, already laughed at me claiming I made a very simple mac and cheese sound very sophisticated. And telling the truth, I was kind of disappointed myself, since all it had in the box were some macaroni and shredded cheese. As a consumer you have to add butter and milk yourself. Not very impressive. And although Erik claimed that this was a classic bachelor's dinner, I think I will switch back to simpler cooking.

Here is what a classic bachelor's dinner look like:

P.S. About the wine. I had a rather annoying accident a few days ago when I went to buy the wine and they refused selling it to me and wouldn't accept my Israeli driving license. I had a very long argument with them, including the manager of the store, but there was a very solid "no". So, now I guess I will have to get a local driving license, even if only for purpose of drinking in pubs and buying alcohol.

Proof

2006-08-31T00:09:00.000-04:00

A few days ago a postman came and put a label with my family name on our mailbox. Apparently, here if you receive a lot of mail to a certain address, they logically conclude that you live there and put a label with your name on the mailbox. Isn't it great? I liked it…

And here is a proof that I actually live here now:

Naming the desk

2006-08-28T01:41:00.000-04:00

Well, today (Sunday), I finished re-building my new desk and I think I am pretty happy with it. It is big, it is nice and it smells well :) A short retrospective may be useful. Here is what we had at the beginning:

And here is what we got at the end:

And this is how my future home office is starting to look like:

Did anyone say wires? :)

And now to the big task – I need a name for the desk. Since this piece of furniture is probably destined to company me in the next few years and since it will probably serve me in writing the dissertation, it really needs a name. This is because it is now like a boat with which I am sailing and as you might know, the name of the boat predicts the quality of the sail. So, suggestions for a name are required!

Summer camp pics

2006-08-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

I think I mentioned it before that I was going through an International Teaching Assistants training. Here are the pictures of the event. You don't have to log in, just click on "View Slideshow".

I think the best thing that came out of the workshop is that I got to know many people. After less than three weeks, I walk on campus and see familiar faces. I like it :)

The wall of fame

2006-08-24T01:39:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow (or actually already today) the semester is about to start. Early? Yes. But what can I do about it? On Tuesday we had a departmental orientation, which included presentation of research areas of the faculty (something I believed people should've known before applying to the department, but I am not here to judge :) and giving away a lot of material about the university and more. Then there was a nice dinner where you could also have a chance to chat with the faculty and other students. However, a more amusing thing took place earlier, at the very beginning of the day, when all the new-coming faculty and students had to take a photo to be placed on a huge poster which is located at the entrance to the department. Yep, it looks like "doska pocheta" (honorary board) in the good old Soviet times. It is rather funny. And the process itself is even more entertaining. This lady photographer puts you in a very "natural" poses, to get "the best" picture for you. She takes a few and then selects the best one together with you. Mine was "sold" to me with the words: "Here you look very confident and competent. Like: 'I know what I am doing. Give me the job!'". Hopefully I will get hold of the digital version of the picture, so I could share what a composition of " I know what I am doing. Give me the job!" looks like.

Here are some pictures to get you a sense of what the situation looks like. Here is Gina being photographed:

And here is Laura going through the same process and then selecting the pictures:

I went through it too and also Amir Hezroni, who is a visiting professor from (you would never guess…) Israel.

And yes, everyone had also to sign a paper which allows Cornell to do with these pictures whatever they want. Well, that's the price of being posted on the wall of fame...

Getting settled

2006-08-23T23:26:00.000-04:00

Well, settling to a new place may be exciting, but may be also a bit frustrating. So I've been navigating between the two in the last 2.5 weeks, while I had to "personalize" my new home and as part of it get some furniture. Since Ithaca is appears to be kind of center of the world – it centrally remote from most major cities on the East coast – instead of going to Ikea (which, I was told, is about 250 miles away), I renovated some of the used furniture left at the basement of the house I live in. Since my time at home is limited, it was a frustrating and long process. However, as the outcomes start appearing, I think I do getting excited for the place starts getting a sense of home. So I painted some of the walls (maybe will share pictures later) and am getting some the furniture finished.

Here is the first one…. [drums]… a dresser!

Here what it looked like before:

And here what it looks like now in my room:

Well, I am not sure I am absolutely in love with colors, but it makes my room more colorful (instead of plain white) and it definitely could be worse. Now, there are more things "cooking" and I will post pictures as they are ready. So far, I think I really like how my future desk is turning out. Wait and see…

Zeus and Co.

2006-08-21T01:05:00.000-04:00

I was pleased to discover that there are people who actually practice worshiping the 12 gods of Greek mythology. I think this is rather stylish :)

(if you don't read Greek, you can use Babel Fish to translate).

Thank you Nikos for the info!

_________

An update coming from Nikos: They also have a website. So, if you are interested in details, here is the link to the English version.

Ithaca is gorges

2006-08-21T00:46:00.000-04:00

Yesterday (Saturday) it was raining heavily:

To me, it was nice. It wasn't cold, wasn't hot and there was a feel of freshness in the air. The sad thing about it was that I couldn't go to the planned mini-track at one of the lakes in the area. However, today, when I had to walk up the hill (!!!) to the campus (since there is no bus in proximity on weekends) I took the Cascadilla creek rote and it was amazingly beautiful! The gorge was full of water and the stream was so strong and laud… a totally different experience from the calm creek two weeks ago.

So now I start understanding where the phrase "Ithaca is gorges" came from.

Getting settled

2006-08-19T10:37:00.000-04:00

More visual updates.

Here is my house:

Well, actually only about 2/5 of it is mine and even that is shared with Erik, my housemate. The right half of the house is ours, the left side is shared by another 4 people (but they have full autonomy, so it is a separate unit) and above us, in the attic, is another one bedroom or a studio place.

This is Erik:

And this is a street which I take on my way to and from the campus (after the creek):

To be continued…

"Head reduction"

2006-08-19T10:32:00.000-04:00

I finished one TA training workshop (for international students) and started another one, this time a more general one. One of the latest points in the international TA workshop was about solving problems in class, particularly issues of cheating and plagiarizing. The message there was clear – if there is a problem in class (e.g. you catch someone cheating), do not do anything yourself and report to your supervisor. You have to remember that you are just a TA... Compared to a one and a half workshop, that was a rather minor, though strong, point there. Now, in the general workshop, it has grown huge. Basically this is one of the main themes in this one – whatever happens, do not make decisions! Whatever happens do not try solving anything yourself! Never make your own judgment – ask your supervisor!

Well, maybe this is the cultural shock, but this seems to me a little bit too much. How could you ever be active and to initiate, if you are being "emasculated" from the very beginning? On the one hand you are taught to be creative and to think out of a box in the class. On the other, you are very limited in your freedom to build you class environment as you see it right.

For me, this entire session reminded the army. In Israel this is called "haktanat rosh" (which I literally translated as "head reduction") - a behavior when you are (mentally) lazy, not willing to make decisions and/or to take responsibility. If you think about this, this is a rather illustrative expression…

Cascadilla creek

2006-08-19T10:15:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a little bit over two weeks since I moved to Ithaca and it seems like an appropriate time to start sharing my experiences about the place. I think for me, the strongest impression so far was that this town (well, more like a village :) is extremely green! Everywhere you look now, you can see green and I enjoy it a lot. Everyone is telling me that this is going to change soon as it will get colder, so I cherish the moment. Here are some pictures from the rote I take back home from the university, which is right by a very beautiful creek called Cascadilla creek:

The pictures are not in any particular order, but still, think it is beautiful and I can walk by this beauty as long as it is warm :)

Welcome to the USA

2006-08-09T01:31:00.000-04:00

Since I am starting a new phase in the US at the moment, I believe this blog may shift into a bit more personal vein particularly since I think it may be a good way to share pictures and share some observations and insights from my current adventure.

So here we go with the first one. I am participating in this International TA Development Program and today I received an "International Teaching Assistant Manual". On page 5 it has an explanation of what small talk is and one of the paragraphs goes like this:

"In many cases, small talk is initiated when one person comments on another person's appearance or belongings. However, there are a few social norms to be aware of in these situations. Women can generally compliment other women on their clothes or shoes. However, men generally do not compliment women, and women do not compliment men on their clothes. An exemption may be when someone is wearing a shirt or a hat with the name of a place you have visited."

Well, welcome to the USA! :)

Long time no Google...

2006-05-31T18:19:00.000-04:00

Sometimes i am sorry i do not blog in HE or there is no (good) translation from any language to any language... I was checking papers in "New Media and Society" course, where students had to analyse verious media products about technology. One of the papers had a very intersting article about Google (the article is in HE). It followed a book by John Battelle called "The Search", which just got translated from EN to HE. Looks like an intersting reading.

Maybe i should start posting some books reviews here... hmm...

The boycott…

2006-05-30T16:34:00.000-04:00

Well, it actually passed. NATFHE actually decided to boycott Israel. I don’t really know even how to react to this for frankly I didn’t believe it’ll happen. I fail to understand the logic behind the decision, which appears ignorant to me and the fact that it was done in between discussion on wages makes it even insulting. I try to imagine how it was actually done: “Now, when we finished discussing the decrease in our pension funds, let talk about boycotting Israel and then will come back to the question of our travel expenses since the gas prices have risen…” Do they really believe that this is what will change the situation? That this is what will encourage the sides to find a solution? It seems like a populist and arrogant decision by which someone probably gained some political capital. Here is this decision is counterproductive by the very least. It creates a situation where people are pushed to the ages. You are not allowed to have a sophisticated opinion (support the existence of a separation wall/fence and argue for full withdrawal from the territories for example). You have to take a stand either you are with “us” or with “them”. How useful can it be? Moreover the decision shows the deflation of words we are having around this conflict (genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, etc. are so easy to use these days and yet bear so little of the original meaning), but that’s an entire different issue for another post.

I tried following what is being in media about this and then in blogs. Of course Haarretz covered this both in HE and EN. Also Ynet had an EN publication about this. If you googled boycott in the last two day you could get the whole bunch of articles about the decision. Same goes for Technorati (only there I searched for “academic boycott Israel” – almost 30 posts in EN in the last two days). The reactions in blogs are rather predictable – there are those who only condemn the boycott or only support it (hmm… I think my own post fits this pattern too). There were more blogs who condemned it and just a few that supported it and even fewer that went into any kind of discussion on the topic (either pro or con). As always, the comments are the best part :)

Good news for bloggers…

2006-05-29T18:09:00.000-04:00

...though not sure if it is as good for the readers.

Another article in HE Haaretz today (I am stopping with it for my subscription to the newspaper is gong to end in just two days :) told a story of Apple’s loss in a suite where they tried to force bloggers to expose their sources. The court said that it has no tools to distinguish between “legitimate” (read “mainstream and/or established”) and “non-legitimate” (read “grassroots and/or alternative”) news. Thus all the rules applied in order to protect journalistic practices should be applied to blogs as well.

Seemingly, it is a positive development strengthening the blogsphere. At the same time, I think there are question rising as to the parallels between blogging and journalism. When I am writing that, I have in mind the issue of ethical norms. While established journalists are subject to a certain set of ethical norms and rules, are the bloggers subject to same criteria? Should the be? Even when the journalists do not comply with the ethical code, there is scale to assess their activity, but is there such measurement for blogs? And again, should there be? What will stop me tomorrow from attacking a company, an institution or a person, without any basis? What will stop me from spreading lies over the blogshpere? Is there any shared code of conduct here according to which I may check if my actions are legitimate? Or anything is legitimate?

I think I’ll go to sleep on this happy note :)

Following up the boycott initiative.

2006-05-29T05:22:00.000-04:00

Here is another article published in the EN Haaretz about the boycott issue. The writer’s position is pretty known in advance (just try googling his name), but, once again, the article proves that reading the comments is one of the more interesting things :)

Also I took a quick look at other Israeli sources covering the boycott issue. There was only one article in HE Ynet and what seems like a simple translation of it in the EN version. Interesting that the title is “Academics resist boycott of Israeli universities”, which is quite different from what Haaretz had (but to be honest, Haaretz dedicated much more attention to the issue – is it a question of how each one see its audience?).

Jerusalem post also had some coverage of the issue. Looking at the comments you cannot stop wondering what a different crowd reads the different papers (ironically, there was someone named Mike Epstein among the commenters :) Apparently the boycott was already supported by Canadian Union of Public Employees. It is a pity though the JP takes money for the archived content, for it’d be interesting to see what they wrote in the previous articles on the topic (apparently they too covered it for some time already).

I couldn’t find anything on the topic in NRG (Maariv), who has on of the most user-not-friendly websites I ever saw… also I don’t think they have an EN version too.

But the most fascinating things happens of course in the blogsphere. I searched for a string “academic boycott Israel” and got 1,079 results in English with any authority. Although there are not that many blogs dealing with the issue (look at this chart) the topic has been discussed pretty much constantly through out the year (at least one post a day I think) with some peaks (one really distinct was at the end of December last year – I wonder why was that?). However, I couldn’t find anything too fascinating there. Just the standard reference to mainstream media publications.

Tomorrow is the vote for boycott.

2006-05-28T04:25:00.000-04:00

Well, tomorrow, the British National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE – how do you pronounce that?) is going to vote on the boycott issue. There was an article in Haaretz on this subject, focusing on the efforts to stop the initiative.

Interestingly enough, there is a significant difference between the English and the Hebrew versions of the article. The EN one is much more ‘parve’ I would say, and in this way diminishes the complexity of this situation. For example, the HE version ends with a quote of Prof. Arik Monman from the City University of London, who is actually an activists against the boycott. He says a few things, such as: “For many members of the union the boycott is simply another aspect of leftists activity”. Then he adds that the boycott will actually be a very minor issue at the summit, since the major topic is going to be (surprise, surprise) diminution in the real values of the salaries of the association’s members.

I think quote like this puts the entire idea in a bit different proportion and yet again emphasized my initial idea that people who are actually acting for such action do not really appreciate its importance and complexity. In a way it reminds me all the early anthropologic studies when (frequently British :) researchers even didn’t leave their comfortable armchairs writing about the aborigines and the native societies from a pretty arrogant perspective (or when they did go, it still was a patronic attitude towards their subjects – because the developed world knows much better what is good for you) … History tends to repeat itself, and it is interesting to find yourself in a position of an aborigine…

Academic boycott

2006-05-22T18:49:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I read about the renewal of an academic boycott on Israel by the British academics and I fail to follow the logic of it. Not only it attacks the sector which probably holds the most liberal views and is promoting a leftist agenda, the argumentation provided is so lousy, stereotypical and blindfolded, that it crates an obstacle by itself towards any kind of dialogue. There was an article in the Hebrew version of Haaretz today, which made me wonder, how many of those who so passionately advocate such boycott (it is already the second large scale attempt) do really understand what is going on here? Is any idea, articulated strongly enough able to carry away even the very intelligent groups of European academics without trying to go into the depth of it? Weird feeling… Still thinking about it…

First we took Ashdod, then we took Tel-Aviv…

2006-05-22T05:22:00.000-04:00

… (and probably Neve Elan too)

Just a short remark, trying to keep the blog alive. Yesterday I discovered that the Israeli channel 10 has simultaneous voice-over translation to Russian. That was pretty weird watching it, but nevertheless interesting. Of course I run to check the leading Israeli TV channel, channel 2, and their news didn’t have any translation.

Have no idea what to do with this info yet, but I was fascinated…

Anoter brick in the IG debate...

2006-02-28T07:32:00.000-05:00

An interestsing article i just got through Cyber-Society mailing list:

US: Tollbooths on the Internet Highway

by Editorial, The New York Times
February 20th, 2006

When you use the Internet today, your browser glides from one Web site to another, accessing all destinations with equal ease. That could change dramatically, however, if Internet service providers are allowed to tilt the playing field, giving preference to sites that pay them extra and penalizing those that don't.

Continue reading...

On another note, here is a link to an article which Leonichka sent me today:

The Credible Threat.
Dr. Michel Geist
Feb. 28/06

...Starting tomorrow, China's Ministry of Information Industry plans to begin offering four country-code domains. In addition to the dot-cn country code domain, three new Chinese character domains are on the way: dot-China, dot-net, and dot-com. As the People's Daily Online notes this "means Internet users don't have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of the United States." In other words, the Chinese Internet becomes a reality tomorrow...

Continuing the search engines theme...

2006-02-28T06:05:00.000-05:00

There is an apparently interesting workshop on the subject is going to take place in June in Berlin. The title is: The Rising Power of Search-Engines on the Internet: Impacts on Users, Media Policy and Media Business.

A PDF with further information can be found here. I would really like to see the proceedings of such an event...

The future of mobile :)

2006-02-22T06:40:00.000-05:00

Just got this video by e-mail... Nothing like laughing on technology. Enjoy! :)

Google is coming! So what?

2006-02-21T05:12:00.000-05:00

It is a bit weird to write what I am going to, using Google's platform. This is something I'll have to think about… But anyway… If you read "Haaretz" today, you are certain that it is a very big, even historical, date – Google is coming to Israel! Or as it was also phrased: "Google is coming to take its share of the Israeli advertisement market".

Actually Google announced opening of an Israeli branch a few months ago, but yesterday they held their first ever press conference here. "Haaretz" dedicated four(!) pages covering the event and looking on it I couldn't help myself but wondering why?

Except for the fact that the articles recycled already known information about Google again and again, it focused on the (already existing?) tension between Google and the institutionalized advertising. From a title like: "Google is coming to take its share" (EN version) you are getting a sense that Google will revolutionize the advertising industry in Israel - no more and no less. The veteran advertising agencies are shaking from the thought that Google will push them off the market making them irrelevant. Another article, was titled in Hebrew: "The advertising agencies are sending Google a clear message: if you want to make money – work with us" (EN version). Reading that I remember the “offer he couldn’t refuse” from the “God Father”. The most amusing statement quoted was by Yanon Landenberg of "Ideologic". He explained how important the established advertising agencies are, for (only?) they have the knowledge that will allow an effective match between search terms and advertising-worth results. Another article, by Eitan Avirel (EN version), explained how revolutionary Google's entry is for it will make advertising more transparent (and thus more cost-efficient) for the advertiser.

And again, reading all the articles, I couldn't help myself, but thinking what the all fuss is about. Maybe I do not understand something? Particularly being kind of an Internet junky, how come I fail to appreciate the great revolution happening in front of my eyes? Somehow these thoughts reminded me of the times I worked in a VC during the bubble days. I had the same, "dumb" questions back then, but I didn't dare to sound them thinking that I lack the experience to see the entire picture. Thinking back, the naïve questions I had were in place, so now I am trying to raise them again even if only in a blog. Moreover, today I do have a bit more experience to be able to put things in proportion, which again urges me to ask these questions.

The first question rises about the "revolutionarily effect" of the model. There is no doubt that Google's Adword and Adsense are interesting models for online marketing and they apparently work. However, to claim that they revolutionize online advertisement is an exaggeration in my eyes. The entire branch of online advertising is no more than a decade old. During that decade we all could see that simply copying offline advertising strategies online doesn't work and since then the industry was looking for workable models (actually not only in advertising). The process is accompanied by consciously, and I think to a great extend artificially, encouraged hype around the online advertising. The veteran advertising agencies continued playing the same game online trying to lock the web's profitability on them, just as it worked with television (thinking about it, this idea is pretty similar to what Schiller is saying). However, no equilibrium was reached yet, and the industry is still looking for workable models. But the media seem to enter the bubble mode again and comparative institutionalization of the dot.com industries gives more fuel for an exaggerated coverage of every sign of normalization. So, how can you revolutionize something that was not established yet? There is no such a things as an established online advertisement industry yet, so what is the contribution of such coverage?

At the same time it seems like the shake of the dot.com bubble was so strong that the related industries are looking now for some kind of tranquility which will allow them making money without too much crises. Isn't this discourse similar of an "austere strategy" when the industry with the help of media is hiding its head in the sand refusing to learn the trends and adjust to changes? Google has found one profit model that works in the new industry and this is great. Shouldn't this be learned, applied and further developed? In my eyes these are rhetorical questions and I do have unhealthy flashback from the early 2000's thinking about this.

Another point helping to put things in proportion is thinking about the relative size of the online advertisement compared to the total size of the industry. According to various news reports online advertising in Israel accounts for 5-7% of the entire share of the advertising industry, which is estimated around US $805-859 millions. Although it enjoys the fastest growing rates (around 60-70% in 2005), how can it endanger (or revolutionize) the established advertising agencies? Is it me, or the entire issue is way blown out of the proportion? Add on this a very simple fact that only about half of the Israeli population has access to the Internet and you see yet another question mark on the issue of Google-revolution.

Regardless to what is said above, I had another thought I couldn't shake off. It was a great similarity of the treatment Google's opening got and that gained to the visit of Bill Gates a few months ago. Is Google already the next Microsoft? Or it is only in the eyes of the newspapers? Or one particular newspaper? Anyway, I put the paper aside with a weird and unpleasant feeling…

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

23/02/2006: Hebrew, edited version of this post was published today in online TheMarker. TheMarker is the economic branch of Haaretz. You can find the article here.

(Don't) Do no harm...

2006-01-25T17:19:00.000-05:00

Just read in Hebrew Haaretz about Google's recent agreement with Chinese government. The results from google.ch are going to be monitored and censored. So much for ubiquity of the Internet and the "embedded" freedom of speech...

Couldn't help myself but try :)

Search terms: communism critique
(google.cn: 1,020,000 results / google.com: 1,760,000 results)

Search terms: human rights watch

(google.cn: 55,600,000 results / google.com: 55,700,000 results)

And a bit more complex one: human rights watch china

(google.cn: 12,800,000 results / google.com: 103,000,000 results)

And now checking the e-mail i came over another today's article featuring the same topic in Guardian. I tried searching for "Tiananmen Square massacre", which is mentioned in Guardian as a forbidden search, and i got some results. Actually the first page results were pretty much the same at both google.com and google.cn. The mainly apparent difference was in the umber of results (281K in .com and 158K in .cn), which i think was also shared by the previous searches (for some reason in all searches at .cn the number of results was lower compared to a similar string at .com).

However, it seems to me that the fact that i got results for supposedly forbidden strings, might be dependent on my IP address. A few months ago some of my friends and i did a small experiment searching google.com for the same string, but from different locations (Pakistan, Brazil and Israel). Not surprisingly we got different results. Makes you think...

:::::::::::::::
28 Jan 2006: I am sorry, just noticed that you can't really enlarge the screen-shots, so they are not really readable... Well, the point is that filtering works :)

22 Feb 2006: I edited this post once again. Added links from the screen-shots to the actual search results (from today of course) and also the number of results per search term on each site.

A note on WSIS (before I completely forget)

2006-01-24T17:41:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been so long since I've wrote anything here. I keep on putting aside ideas for future posts, but not getting the time to actually write them. Looks like I have to learn making shorter posts more frequently :)

Anyhow, the WSIS topic is left somehow open from my previous post and what I wanted to do is to put a temporal stop here.

It seems to me that the de-facto main issue of WSIS is left undecided. There was no decision on the structure of Internet governance and it seems like the decision was not to decide. Unless I miss something critical here, the decision not to decide means the US point of view prevailed. The web is left to evolve within the current set of rules and governing bodies, with a committee established to think about the future. However, I am left with a feeling of ambiguous ending for the summit. I do not see what were the practical outcomes, either in the original (development) or the emerged (governance) tracks. Or maybe nothing practical was supposed to come out of the summit? I am confused...

As WSIS approaches...

2005-11-15T08:37:00.000-05:00

Yes, as WSIS approaches, I start getting more and more e-mails and articles about the issue of internet governance. As was stated in ZDNet's article: "The three-day summit - originally organized to brainstorm ways to bridge the digital divide in developing countries - has morphed this year into a contentious debate over who should control key portions of the Internet." Which really links to Lisa's comment to my previous post about politics involved in the process.

However, at this point, I just wanted to share with you a few articles that I got today, for I don't have the time to comment in length about it now. The first article is the mentioned above piece from ZDNet UK about the violence between the government and human right activists in Tunisia prior to the summit. The second article from spacewar.com (didn't have the time to check the origins of it) and it is yet another debate about the internet governance issue (I believe we'll have more on this issue). Another interesting article is from news.com.au and it nice, brief summary of the two major positions over the issue (note to myself – read more about the European proposal). The last, but not the least, for now is a view from Indian perspective on the issue of internet government, but even more than that on the (unjustified?) shift from the original focus of the summit on real problems to the issue of “who owns the internet”.

Shall keep on tracking the developments...

The bloggers' silence as a metaphor

2005-11-14T10:52:00.000-05:00

It seems that I am not the only one that is being confused with the silence of the online community about the issue of internet governance. Here is an nice summarizing article about bloggers' (absence of) coverage of WSIS and internet governance. I have no idea what "National Journal" is and the article's title takes a firm stand on the issue ("The U.N. As A Threat To Online Speech"), I think it can be treated as a nice resource on the issue. Moreover, it seems that the bloggers' silence is just one example of online silence.

Another good resource about the issue may be the ISOC's internet governance page. It has lots of links to documents and websites dealing with the issue, however they are very technical in my eyes.

More resources are welcome...

More thoughts on internet governance

2005-11-14T10:08:00.000-05:00

Continuing the issue of internet governance, you may find it interesting to read this article by John Markoff (but only if you have a subscription to online version of NY Times, I got it through one of my mailing lists).

The article argues that centralized governance of the internet is virtually impossible and that the argument over Icann is shifting the argument to the wrong direction. Here are a couple of quotes:

The network designers believe that the very structure of the Internet makes it anathema to the top-down control that governments have traditionally exercised over earlier communications networks.

Unlike centralized networks with a single point of failure and control, the Internet was designed to suffer damage and continue to function. That same quality makes it exceedingly difficult to control or filter.

"The idea of Internet control is an oxymoron," said Robert Taylor, who as a director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Pentagon during the 1960's initiated the development of the Arpanet.

"Everyone seems to think that the D.N.S. system is a big deal, but it's not the heartbeat of the Internet," said Leonard Kleinrock, a computer scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who did pioneering research in data packet switching, the fundamental technique underlying networks. "Who controls the flow of the ocean? Nobody controls it, and it works just fine. There are some things that can't be controlled and should be left distributed."

Although the ocean metaphor is nice, I find a difficulty accepting it. Unlike oceans, Internet is a human, technological invention and as such, it would be really problematic if there was no way to control it. Particularly, when we talk about 13 root domain servers that construct the backbone of the internet, the political argument over the physical control over them becomes more understandable (at least in my eyes). Thus, arguments such as:

Icann was founded with the intent of becoming an independent or "denationalized" group. But in June, the Bush administration backed away from that plan, saying in a "statement of principles" issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that the United States had the right to maintain oversight of Icann indefinitely.

Are really worrisome. Last year I was at a conference dealing with tools to “fight terror in the internet”. Its main focus was on data mining and online surveillance tools. Pretty horrifying for social science person. However, most of the ‘solutions’ presented were still dependent on local legislation, which didn’t imply global threat from the US intervention. What I am trying to say is that maybe the system is not perfect and there is great room for improvement. Moreover, as you could see in the Kofi Anann’s article I sited in the previous post, the main official motivation behind the proposal to change the current system is developmental. However, when you read a phrase like:

In recent years, Icann has become a lightning rod, focusing opposition to American political and economic power. A group of countries, led by developing nations like Iran, China and Brazil, has put forward a range of proposals calling for Icann's management to be made international; most call for a shift to a group like the United Nations.

you come to doubt that the main motivation is bridging the divides between the developed and the developing world. Neither Iran, nor China, excelled in promoting the personal freedom of their citizens (unless I am really deeply in false consciousness).

Well, maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but the debate over internet governance really bothers me and I am skeptical of the embedded durability of the system against centralized control. Although the internet has a seemingly grassroots structure and certainly grassroots associated culture, I think it is important to keep it a civil society organized platform, rather than allowing either governmental organization/s controlling it. It seems to me the responsible governments would look for a way to build on the existing system, improving its openness and accessibility by unprivileged groups and societies, rather to look for a way of fitting it to the old-fashioned boundaries (which seems not to work that well anyway – poverty rates keep on raising worldwide). But this is where the politics get in and I wonder what will be the final result…

Another interesting question that comes to mind is what simple people, particularly those who already use internet and utilize it for doing good, can do to express their opinion on the future of internet governance? And if they want to do anything, how can they (dare I say “we”) carry that out? What do the netizents want?

Is Wikipedia that mediocre?

2005-11-07T13:43:00.000-05:00

Today Veronica sent me an article where Andrew Orlowski tries to establish a claim that Wikipedia is a temporal phenomenon doomed due to its mediocre quality. Most of the support to his claim he gains from the people running “Britannica” and my question – what would he expect? Would he expect them saying that this is a real threat to their business? Would they acknowledge that there is a potentially good enough source to make their product obsolete?

I haven’t conducted or read any research on Wikipedia (although it exists). Due to my skepticism, at the beginning I used occasionally to compare wiki entries with those of Britannica. Those usually turned to be correct and even richer + having context, which is usually not found in printed encyclopedias (try looking at the debates behind such ‘controversial’ topics as “terrorism” for example). Recently, I meet reference to Wikipedia in academic articles and just a few months ago, I heard a researcher from MIT referring to it as “the best information source these days”. Personally, I tend to use Wikipedia pretty often to get initial idea of new terms (particularly about food :).

Reading an article like this I am getting the same feeling I indicated in the previous post. It seems that there is something new and principally different emerging on the web and the older, established systems are refusing to accept this new ‘thing’. Just today at the research methods class I TA there was a discussion about science and the lecturer gave an example of Copernicus, whose ideas were rejected by the church. They were not rejected purely by some religious verdict. The church had its own scientists who proved he was wrong using the scientific tools/instruments of that period. The basic claim was that if we calculate the speed of the Earth, we are getting some 1750km/h – so, how come we do not feel it? The answer came only a few decades later with Galileo’s findings and today people treat this as obvious without even thinking of doubting it (which is not necessarily good).

Of course there is room to criticize Wikipedia, but maybe as a phenomenon, it is something the current paradigms did not learn yet to understand and/or explain? So the best tactic is to preserve the known and understandable? To feel safe? Do the encyclopedias the only owners of public knowledge?

P.S. Also there were a couple of phrases in the article that were very difficult to leave unnoticed. For example, after spending 5 hours yesterday and 3 hours today in the library, the Tom Panelas’s quote “People who use Wikipedia either wouldn't have done anything before - they didn't go to the library to get the information…” is really offensive. Also, at least the last part of Daan Strebe’s remark: “I think of it only as a reference lacking authority, like the rest of the Web” is quite a simplistic generalization given the number of reliable online sources and academic journals.

P.P.S. I couldn’t find who the people/organizations behind “The Register” are. Anyone can help?

Flying jet with a scooter license?

2005-11-05T21:03:00.000-05:00

Seems like I was extremely lucky today…

It’s been a while since I am concerned with the Internet governance issue. WSIS seems to host an extensive debate on the issue and the coming summit in Tunis is supposed to host the culmination. While the summit presents a great degree of politics into the technological realm (thus making official thing that we already know), the official argument about internet governance is more ideological than anything else. So in the next lines, I’ll try to focus on the ideological realm…

So, today I played with google.news and came across an article from Washington post, where Kofi Annan presents the point of view of UN starting with a-very-comfortable-to-quote:

“One mistaken notion is that the United Nations wants to "take over," police or otherwise control the Internet. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The United Nations wants only to ensure the Internet's global reach”

He continues with:

“For historical reasons, the United States has the ultimate authority over some of the Internet's core resources. It is an authority that many say should be shared with the international community. The United States, which has exercised its oversight responsibilities fairly and honorably, recognizes that other governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns, and that efforts to make the governance arrangements more international should continue.

The need for change is a reflection of the future, when Internet growth will be most dramatic in developing countries. What we are seeing is the beginning of a dialogue between two different cultures: the nongovernmental Internet community, with its traditions of informal, bottom-up decision making, and the more formal, structured world of governments and intergovernmental rganizations.”

After re-reading the original article three times, I wondered if it was only me feeling uncomfortable with the presented arguments and moreover with the presented perspective of governments running the internet. At the time of writing this post, Technorati has 17 blog posts linked to this article. Surprisingly, all 15 of those I could read, were skeptical to critical regarding the UN intensions. You can view Kenneth Anderson’s post as one of the moderate reactions; others were much stronger phrased.

Since all the blogs above were all in English and most of them were clearly identified as American, I thought to continue looking for additional views and searched for blogs in Russian and in Hebrew. Both searches were not fruitful, but I’ll keep on looking. An extended search brought some interesting results like this and this, dealing with the entire isuse of internet governance, as well as some pages with resources such as this and this (a US advocating NGO). Finally, I managed to find a post talking in favor of transmitting the internet governance to UN.

I shall keep on looking for additional views, but these preliminary results made me thinking why would the netizens oppose a change in current system of internet governance? Is it mere “don’t fix it until it broken”? I think that the answer can be found in the statement of SG himself – the cultural gap between the internet as a phenomenon and the modern politics as we know them.

About a year ago, my friend Sharon and I wrote a paper about the relationships between the civil society and the internet platform. In retrospective, there is one major point missing from our article – the grassroots nature of the internet itself, or as put by the SG “traditions of informal, bottom-up decision making”. The conflict arises when there is an attempt to govern something we yet learned to understand (internet) with irrelevant tools (policies and practices developed prior to the internet). I would say that in a way it reminds the attempts of church to deal with discoveries of Copernicus.

The fact that there is a world summit called to discuss internet related issues with particular focus on who is going to control it, is another fact supporting its extreme significance in modern societies. The governments have discovered that there is something happening that they cannot ignore anymore. Apparently, the culture emerging online makes the governments worry, each for its own reasons, but mostly for loosing control. On the one hand, it is acceptable and favorable to talk about grassroots democracy, flourishing civil society and civil activism. The modern technology allows maximizing all those, creating new forms of organizations and activism (both positive and negative). This doesn’t fit the old hierarchical and centralized models of governance. This leads to fear in the old system. It shakes it… So, what seems to happen is instead of understanding the change and channeling it for mutual benefits, there is an attempt to fit it into known small frames of bureaucracy for we feel more comfortable in familiar environment. This attempt looks like trying to fly a jet with a 50cc scooter driving license – I don’t think it can work.

There is a reason for existence of the civil society. As I see it, the reason is a failure of official governments or the private sector to answer the needs of people (the issue of developing countries brought by Kofi Annan in his article is an excellent example for this). It is an expression of values and personal abilities of individuals, who are willing to change their close environment or even the world. What stands at the basis of civil society are first of all the people. Similarly, even if the technological infrastructure was developed by the military and the academia, the culture of the web is a result of human interaction. This culture seems to be very different from what the world has known. One of the characteristics of this culture is its bottom-up evolution and relatively flat structure (take blogs for example). The other characteristic is the fact that this young culture is populated mostly by young, playing a role in crystallizing their views and perceptions. Can you fit it into a box of static rules and procedures? Can you do it without practically destroying it?

Of course one could claim that in current situation the internet is not a pure civil society realm, but is under US supervision. It seems that the fact that this internet governance argument exists, means that the current system is open enough to allow emergence of a new culture (I am a bit too tired now to continue with explanations and discussion :).

Although I believe this post presents a stand I would like to end it with questions. What am I missing in arguments in support of transferring internet governance to UN? Where the current system is failing on a practical level so it (the internet governance system) prevents the developing countries from benefiting the web? Isn’t getting the internet officially politicized bares more dangers than building on the existing practices and improving them? How do you think this should be settled?

I’ll try to follow up on this and everyone is mostly welcome to comment…

AdverBlog

2005-10-12T05:29:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I read an article from Economist about how internet has empowered the consumers. I think the basic points are well known: those who can access and know how to use the web have much more useful information for what can be labeled as “critical consumption”. They can compare quality, prices, have better basis for decision making, etc. Makes sense…

On interesting point in the article is mentioning blogs as one of a more trustful sources of information. This is particularly true with some blogs that gain extreme popularity and bloggers who have built a reputation and became kind of point of reference for others. Probably this is part of the “blog-excitement” trend, but it seems like it is also true to a great extend. Well, at least now, as long as blogging remains a grassroots activity.

The question which jumped in the back of my mind however was how long it will remain this way? How long it will take till bloggers will start getting paid for what they write? And how long it will take till they’ll start writing exactly what they are paid for? The article mentioned Microsoft adopting one of the celebrity bloggers “even though they are aware he can one day start writing critically about the company” and google suggest already today commercializing your blog with placing commercial (may sound pretty innocent at this point, but it is just a beginning). What is going to be next?

How long will it take advertisement agencies and PR companies to start employing bloggers in order to promote certain brands? Well, they are already doing it in a way by using forums, talkbacks, etc. Just think about how effective it would be for the cost of a single person salary to crate a point of reference for anything regarding let say cars… All you have to do is simply feed it with recommendations paid for by your consumers and you get the best PR ever. Of course it is open for feedbacks and people can and most probably will criticize bad recommendations, but the pivot will still remain biased.

So, the question is (when) will blogs become AdverBlogs?

Blog SPAM

2005-10-09T09:32:00.000-04:00

It seems like my blog is being spammed even though it has just a few posts... On my first post i got advertisement of a dating site, on the second a blog promoting buying Iraqi Dinnars...

Is there any way to deal with this?

(BTW, what would a blog spam called in one word "spog", "blam" or "blosp"? I tihnk i like the first one...)

News abuse

2005-10-09T08:57:00.000-04:00

Yesterday (Oct. 08) there was a terrible earthquake in South Asia. At around 20:00 Israel time, about 1700 people were reported dead in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. Although it was just a tip of an iceberg compared to what we know about the scope of the tragedy today, the issue naturally caught the headlines all media.

Well, almost…

Before we continue, a footnote about the Israeli TV market. There are 3.5 major broadcast channels in Israel: State owned channel 1; privately owned channels 2 and 10 and privately owned channel 9 which is rather small since it focused on the Russian speaking community. All of them show news, actuality and entertainment programs.

Channel 2 is the leading one scoring for most eyeballs of Israeli viewers and the one which many like to criticize for a really shallow content (which really is shallow). Channel 10 is its major competitor, but it is very young (since 2002) and is still loosing money. One of the recent steps channel 10 has undertaken is buying rights for translation of many sport events, primarily soccer games, which are extremely popular in Israel.

Both channels have supposedly independent news companies, which are (not surprisingly) responsible for gathering and analysis of news. There is a firm formal separation between the channels and news companies. Everything is aimed to separate news from everything else in order to assure maximum accuracy.

Now, getting back to the question mark above, let add another one: what happens when there is a natural disaster with thousands dead and wounded and a game of Israeli national team, which has a slight chance of getting to Mondial? What item should go first? And what item should go first if the game is translated on your channel on the same night?

The news company of channel 10 is usually provides very good news in my eyes. Usually, it seems like they are trying hardier and daring more than the better established news company of channel 2. However yesterday, it looked really bizarre when they started the evening news with a 3 minutes item about the hopeless game and then easily moved talking about the death and distraction in Pakistan (interestingly enough, they also started news 2 minutes before the competitors, but it’s another story).

The news on channel 2 started as one could assume with reportage about the earthquake. I don’t know if they mentioned the game later, but this is less important. What is important in my eyes is the border that is getting crossed again and again between news and program promotions. Channel 2 has its own record of split screen with a soccer game on one half and reportage abut suicide bombing on the other and about opening the news with item about a reality shown at the same channel later that night.

So the question is: where is the red line? I think this time it was really irritating, but surprisingly got no response in other media or any public debate.

(ah, wonders of the media… this is why I find this field fascinating)

Kick-off

2005-08-15T15:28:00.000-04:00

Here we go... I decided to join the blog-trend. Actually, what moved me into trying it was an article in Haaretz about people using blogs in the process of writing books. It appeared to be a great way to share your thoughts and get some feedbacks. At the same time, i have all those ideas and thoughts during the day, which i sometimes think would be interesting to share with others or simply to write down. Maybe this would be a good medium to organize the thoughts.

So, I am, trying out a new toy...

I have to admit in advance that it would be difficult for me to promise stable and constant update of the blog, but I am willing to give it a try. I even have no idea if anyone ever going to read it....

Anyway, today I wanted to start with few observations on television… I am starting the blog on August the 15th, a supposed to be historical date for Israel - disengagement from Gaza. I don’t want to talk abut the act itself, but rather about the media event it has become.

I don’t know if any of the readers live in Israel, but if you not it is important to understand that for the last few months it has been the main issue on public agenda. About a week ago started a promotion of disengagement to come – every newspaper, news website, TV station, etc. showed off with an army of reporters to be allocated all over the Gaza strip. From the early morning today two major private TV stations entered a news mode. This means that a crew was sent practically to every possible point of “action”. What meant by “action” is violent clashes of police with settlers.

Before we continue, another point for non Israeli readers about the flow of the disengagement itself: people were offered to leave their homes in Gaza strip quite a while ago and there is a vast scheme of support and compensations for those who are leaving. Again, without getting into ideological debate, some people left, others decided to stay and there were also those who came in purpose to the strip in order to disturb the process. So, today and tomorrow, the army is going around the settlements giving people official orders to move out and starting from Wednesday, the pullout will be made by force.

However, the media couldn’t wait and as I said, already today at the morning they started translated from all over the place. Unfortunately for them, nothing really happened… It looked like a badly organized reality show… For at least two hours at the morning they were showing praying settlers. Since it was an absolutely not newsworthy item, the reporters were trying to make the future item to be… “Here settlers are getting information by SMS (technological wonder!!!) about the army moves” … “Here, look at these faces, they will give a fight to the military forces” … “This is a spot where we expect to be the greatest violence” …

It looked like the reporters were really looking for blood, but it simply wasn’t there… They even run out of speculations and were simply telling what is that they are seeing… When I was a kid, whenever we went out of the city, I tended to sing songs about whatever I saw: “Here is standing a caw on green grass; and the sky is blue above a green forest; here is a yellow car bypassed us” and more… This is what the reports looked like: “Here are the settlers, they are praying, these are the words of this prayer, the one in orange shirt turned left, the kid near him set down, I wonder when the action will begin, I want to see blood…”

However, as it was also expected, nothing really happened, except for some arguments between the settlers and the solders, who came to give out the orders. Till the evening, those meetings were over-dramatized and shown as a short clip per settlement. And again the search for violence, which wasn’t really there was so evident that you couldn’t escape noticing it… So, the evening news blocks were ‘fun’… we could see the vide clips , which practically showed the same and the commentators promising us more violence in the future… The most amazing thing was that as 21:00 approached, both channels without hesitation turned on the floor to “The star is being born” and to the soccer/football game between Israeli and Ukrainian teams. This is of course after promoting the programs in the last items of “so shocking” news blocks of this historical day (BTW, both programs are broadcasted live, as well as this entire day of translations from Gaza – can we mark this day as a “live TV day”?). After 21:00, the life got back to normal and the tragedy was given a break…. Till tomorrow morning, don’t worry, we are promised a lot of violence in the coming days…

Here I have to notice the behavior of the Russian Israeli channel 9. They really wanted to be there, to cover the history. But the thing is, they have less resources compared to the other channels. So, although they changed the programs schedule, all they could present is a battery of right wing politicians, who one by one were interviewed by Yossef Shagal, who kindly allowed them to express their political agenda instead of dealing with his questions. Thus for example PM Yuli Stern, when asked about economical aspects of keeping the settlements vs. disassembling them, talked about how terrible it is to take people out of their houses. What is the connection? I don’t know. Why asking PM and not a professional about economics? I don’t know… I only wonder, if this political alley was arranged due to lack of resources to create their own disengagement-reality-show or there is something else? The channel’s reporter in Gaza was interviewed by Shagal about what do other media say about us, Israelis. Well, given the shortage of resources and the cost of such a transmission, it is a very logical thing to do… The true answer is at the end – apparently, at the first press conference after closing the gate to Gaza, Israel 9’s reporter was the first one to ask the commander a question. Shagal is happy: “This means we won”… Hooray!

That would be it for a starter…. Let see what comes out of this idea…